Fantastic Four and X-Men: Apocalypse fell short of expectations. However, 20th Century Fox didn’t feel the need to press the panic button on their Marvel superhero franchise because they bagged big bucks from the movie that was released in between: The R-rated blockbuster Deadpool.
Next week's Logan has already earned rave reviews from film critics, so the studio can overlook comments like "Give X-Men back to Marvel!" They’re looking forward with increased vigor to making movies with lesser-known and unique characters, rather than relying on the mainstream X-Men.
Simon Kinberg, current overseer of Fox's superhero universe, told Collider that at least two of the many projects currently in development - The New Mutants and Deadpool 2 – have 2018 release dates:
We're gearing up to make both of them this year. For New Mutants, we're waiting on a new draft of the script, which we're all very excited about. Josh Boone has been prepping that movie.
Kinberg went on to sing Boone’s praises, calling him "a lifelong, hardcore fan of New Mutants". He continued:
The plan is to make that movie late spring, early summer of this year, and have it come out next year.
As for the Deadpool sequel, Kinberg said that Ryan Reynolds and the creative team had been working diligently on the screenplay:
We have a really good script for that movie, and we're into the casting process right now for some of the new characters.
Of course, we know he’s referring to Cable and Domino. The mutants will make their live-action cinematic debuts in the second standalone movie for the Merc with a Mouth. Then all three characters are set to appear in an X-Force movie. Kinberg added:
And the plan would be to shoot that movie this year, as well, and have it come out next year. So potentially, next year you will have a surfeit of X-Men and X-Men related movies in theaters.
The writer/producer has been quite busy lately, promoting Logan and talking about the many upcoming X-Men Universe installments. Just today, we came across two other interviews, in which he offered updates on the current status of Gambit and addressed rumors about directing X-Men 7.
