Fox has announced its upcoming release date slate and good lord, we are in for a lot of X-Men. There are three upcoming movies set in the X-Men universe. Yes, three.
THR reports that the studio has handed out slots for Deadpool 2, New Mutants, and that long-rumoured and now-finally confirmed new X-Men film, which is taking on the Dark Phoenix storyline.
First up is New Mutants, coming from The Fault In Our Stars‘ Josh Boone. We’ve been hearing a lot of rumours about casting for this one recently, and we’ll be seeing the film itself on 13 April 2018. The names most consistently circling it have been The Witch‘s Anya Taylor-Joy (possibly as Magik/Illyana Rasputin) and Game Of Thrones‘ Maisie Williams (possibly as Wolfsbane), and we could see X-Men: Apocalypse‘s Alexandra Shipp returning as Storm. James McAvoy has also been heavily tipped to appear as Charles Xavier, but no one has come out and confirmed anything yet. Still, it’s less than a year away, so expect news soon.
Next, it’s Deadpool 2. Ryan Reynolds will slide back into the red and black suit and smash some fourth walls on 1 June 2018. John Wick co-director David Leitch is behind the camera and Josh Brolin was recently confirmed as time-travelling badass Cable. He joins Atlanta‘s Zazie Beetz as Domino, as well as returning Deadpool stars Brianna Hildebrand (Negasonic Teenage Warhead), Stefan Kapičić (Colossus) and Karan Soni as Dopinder. TJ Miller (Weasel) and Morena Baccarin (Vanessa) have yet to be confirmed.
Finally, we’ll get that X-Men: Apocalypse follow-up: Dark Phoenix. Yep, they’re tackling that again, and hopefully they’ll get it right this time. It is impressive that the X-Men movie universe timeline has managed to contort itself into being able to fix X-Men: The Last Stand. Classic X-Men.
Sophie Turner is expected to return as Jean Grey, as is Tye Sheridan as Scott Summers/Cyclops. The young X-Men (Nightcrawler, Storm, Quicksilver, etc) were definitely the best part of the messy, overstuffed Apocalypse, and we’re certainly up for seeing that group without all that added baggage (sorry, Oscar Isaac). Long-time X-Men movie writer Simon Kinberg is currently the frontrunner to direct.
But what of Gambit? Hmm.
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