Who the hell thought a press event for the loathsome X-men Origins: Wolverine Blu-Ray release could have interesting tidbits of news? You'd think they'd just spend the entire time apologizing for the 2 hours of our lives we flushed away, and offer free passes to a future Deadpool screening or something as penance. But nope. Good thing Slashfilm was there to catch these little nuggets about the future of the X-men franchise. Here are the highlights courtesy of producer Lauren Shuler Donner...
-Contrary to Tim Pocock's(he played young Cyclops in X-men Origins) tweet from a few days ago, X-men: First Class is not scheduled to start in February 2010, and in fact has no scheduled start date at all. No actors have been signed to the film, either. Then she revealed that all the young actors from the previous films have options for future movies, so you might as well count them in if/when First Class gets off the ground. First Class is intended to be the story of the first group of X-men(Cyclops, Jean Grey, Storm, and others) and their earliest missions as a team under Xavier's tutelage.
-Donner admitted that she has two X-men related films she's currently trying to get off the ground. The first is a big screen version of The New Mutants! Serious? The New Mutants for those that don't speak comic book nerdese, are basically the next generation of mutants to graduate from the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters. Considering the odd chronology of the movies, I'm not sure where this team would fit in, since all of the X-men on screen are relatively young in appearance...with the exception of Fammke Janssen's Jean Grey, who looks like she's robbin' the cradle with ol' Cyclops.
-And the second project is...wait for it.....X4! Whether or not this would reunite the original X-men cast(most of which are dead or gone) or bring in a new core group is unclear. After the disaster that was The Last Stand, one hopes they decide to get back to basics somewhat, and hire a director who...y'know...can actually direct.
None of these projects are officially underway as of yet, but the mere fact that Donner had the sand to talk about them in public means she's pretty confident they'll get done. We'll be keeping an eye on these projects for sure.
