Posted on: September 18th, 2009 Will We See X-Men: First Class in 2010?
It’s no secret that Fox is nowhere near done with the X-Men franchise. After the huge box-office success of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, they announced a sequel – which will take Wolverine to Japan, inspired by Frank Miller & Chris Claremont’s iconic mini-series – and it’s pretty likely we’ll see the often talked-about Magneto solo flick. But where does that leave the X-Men team, in film-form?
While an sequel to X-Men: The Last Stand remains up in the air (and unlikely anytime soon), Fox is taking it back to prequel town. Kinda. The franchise will move forward, or backward depending on how you look at it, with X-Men: First Class, a film based on the relatively new comic series telling the first year of the mutant superheroes in Charles Xavier’s school for the gifted. In the comics, the stories focused on characters Angel, Beast, Cyclops, Iceman and Jean Grey.
Lauren Shuler Donner, producer of the first three X-Men films and Wolverine, is attached to First Class and has stated that the intent is to build a new franchise out of this youth-focused X-Men. In May of last year, writer Josh Schwartz joined the project. Now, for those of you who don’t know, Schwartz is the creator of The O.C. and Gossip Girl. This speaks volumes of what the tone of First Class will no doubt be; teen drama, mega-mainstream stuff…
While no start date, director or cast has been announced yet, young actor Tim Pocock – who played the young Scott Summers (before acquiring the Cyclops name) in Wolverine – updated his twitter account with this:
“currently shooting Australian TV series till February 2010…then X-men first class”
Obviously, his tweet sent the net into a frenzy with the news that the film could start production in less than 6 months from now. A couple days later however, Pocock updated his twitter status negating his supposed big reveal with:
“victim of cruel prank. last tweet = NOT me. AM filming Aussie show till 2010. no official word on XM:FC but am interested. please post retraction.”
This kind of screams “busted” to me. I look at it one of two ways – either it was a prank, or he let the cat out of the bag and someone at the studio gave him a spanking and he’s covering his tracks. Either way, we really didn’t see enough of Mr. Pocock in Wolverine for me to gauge whether or not a good Cyclops he would make. He’s young looking, definitely, but I have the feeling I’m not really going to become all that invested in First Class. To be honest I haven’t read the book, but the thought of another Fox driven X-Men film, this time youth-centric, does nothing at all for me.
Take it for what it’s worth.
More on X-Men: First Class as it develops. What are your thoughts? Have you read the book? Are you looking forward to this, and more from the Fox franchise?
One Response to “Will We See X-Men: First Class in 2010?”
-
Bryan Singer to Direct X-Men: First Class « Giant Killer Squid - Film, Comics, News, Reviews and more Says:
December 17th, 2009 at 10:09 am[...] I had harsh words for the direction of the franchise, specifically with a younger, teenage X-Men origins story, [...]