The latest issue of Empire (via Obsessed With Film) has put “X-Men: First Class” stars James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender front and center. And while the feature story may center on one of the biggest comic films of the summer, the real juicy bits have to do with the Marvel franchises that are on the distant horizon.
While ‘First Class’ is a fresh start for the mutant heroes, with Matthew Vaughn taking it back all the way to their ’60s roots, producer Lauren Shuler Donner reveals that the story created in the original trilogy of the films isn’t over yet and a fourth entry is moving forward. “We took the treatment to Fox and they love it… And X4 leads into X5,” Donner said. However, the most intriguing bit of news surrounds the developing “Deadpool” spinoff.
“It’s a total reboot…,” Donner notes, adding “it’s insane, it’s definitely comedy.” The comments definitely fall in line with director David Slade‘s recent words over Twitter where he denied he was involved with the film, saying that the studio was looking for a comedy director to take on the film. It’s an interesting, but not entirely shocking approach to the merc with a mouth but even more, it appears that they aren’t going to tidy it up for the kiddies.
“But it’s an R script, it’s really irreverent and violent. Right away, we’re out of the X-Men world,” Donner said. And while that’s potentially awesome, we’ll believe it when we see it. Deadpool is already a niche superhero and unless they can keep the budget down, we don’t see Fox throwing tentpole money for a movie that will shut out a big chunk of the potential audience. Guess we’ll have to see where this all goes but Ryan Reynolds — who wants to do the film, but who admits scheduling might be an issue — is quite involved in the process.
“He’s very involved, Ryan. He’s working with the writers on the screenplay and it is as much as it is ours,” Donner said adding, “I’m tellin’ ya, it’s true to the comic. You’ll see all of them. You’ll see Wade Wilson, the good-looking Ryan Reynolds! You’ll see Deadpool in his costume and you’ll see the cancer-scarred face.” Exciting stuff for comic fans indeed.
“X-Men: First Class” opens on June 3, 2011 (and yes, these scans aren’t so hot but we’re sure official pics are around the corner).
