Shuler Donner Provides An Update On Future ‘X-Men’ Films
Lauren Shuler Donner has produced every single X-Men related film to date, and is producing all the ones that are coming.
In an interview with Empire Mag as part of the promotion of the X-Men Origins: Wolverine DVD and Blu-ray release, she’s provided a detailed update on the status of X-Men: First Class, X-Men Origins: Wolverine 2, Deadpool, and X-Men Origins: Magneto.
Following are summaries of what she had to say.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine 2
“That’s the furthest along of all the X-Men projects on the boil. It’s actually the story we wanted to use for the first Wolverine film, but [Fox head honcho] Tom Rothman preferred to set the character up with an origin story first. This movie will really focus on the relationship between Wolverine and Mariko, the daughter of a Japanese crime lord, and what happens to him in Japan…There’ll be samurai, ninja, katana blades, different forms of martial arts – mano-a-mano, extreme fighting. We’re going to come up with a new style of fighting. It’s going to be awesome.”
X-Men: First Class
“Harry Potter is a bit of a role model for us, absolutely. But we want it to be like the recent, darker Potters. It should not be a kiddie movie – we’re in the X-Men world so you can’t suddenly change the tone…Right now the script is not done -we’re not where we want to be yet. We have to be careful that we don’t tread on familiar territory, that people don’t say, “Oh, I’ve seen that, been there.” But (screenwriter) Josh Schwartz has a great young pulse and he’s doing an amazing job bringing the characters to life. We want to make this a franchise, following these kids at the school, so the casting of the child actors will be all-important.”
Deadpool
“I want to ignore the version of Deadpool that we saw in Wolverine and just start over again. Reboot it. Because this guy talks, obviously, and to muzzle him would be insane…it’s going to be a dark, snarky, very funny movie. It’s the hardest story to tell, I think. There’s no clear cut villain – though you do have great baddies from the comic-books like Black Tom, Slayback, Blind Al and the Weasel…We’re right in the thick of talking to writers right now, and hopefully by November we’ll have decided who’s going to do it. We need someone really imaginative because we want to do some really innovative, ambitious stuff. Ryan’s mentioned this in an interview already but there are parts where he’s going to break the fourth wall and talk directly to the audience in the cinema. We have to work out how to do that. I don’t know that Fox will agree with all our decisions, but we’ll see!”
Magneto
“David Goyer has written a brilliant script. It starts in the concentration camps and has Magneto coming out of there. But you know, I’m not sure that film is going to be made. The studio has a wealth of potential stories, and they have to stand back and decide which ones to make. And Magneto, I think, is at the back of the queue. Maybe it’ll get made in five years – who knows?
If you would like to read more (and Shuler Donner does go into quite a bit more detail on these films than these summaries include), visit Empire Mag here.
November 21st, 2009 at 2:22 pm
Magneto was supposed to wear the red and purple spandex suit that he wore in the comic books.