Marvel film updates!

We’ve got some news on a few upcoming titles, and it’s rather…well…I’ll let you decide.

Lauren Shuler-Donner, producer of X-MEN gave some curious details on a few upcoming films: WOLVERINE 2, X-MEN: FIRST CLASS, DEADPOOL, and MAGNETO. Here are some the highlights:

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] Tom Rothman preferred to set the character up with an origin story first. We’re very fortunate to have a story mostly outlined for us [from the comic book arc co-written by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller]. And we wanted an A+ writer, so we want to Chris McQuarrie (Valkyrie, The Usual Suspects). We want to make it authentic so I think it’s very likely we’ll be shooting in Japan. What’s cool about this part of the saga is that Wolverine will be fighting in a different style to what we’ve seen before. Mariko’s father has this stick-like weapon, so Wolverine will have to fight against that. 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.”

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.Basically in each one the kids are fighting strange villains, sometimes it’s aliens, sometimes it’s monsters. I want to get a flavour of that world. Occasionally the kids will be in class, but more often they’ll be off on adventures. Which Professor X isn’t too happy about! Right now the script is not done -we’re not where we want to be yet. 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. There are good stories and we’re figuring out which ones to incorporate. 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? I can tell you that Ian McKellen won’t be playing the character the whole way through. We used Lola technology in X-Men 3 to de-age Ian and Patrick for one scene, but it’s very expensive. To do that for a two-hour movie would be prohibitive financially. And to find a younger actor to fill Ian’s shoes, that’s pretty daunting. It’s not easy.”

There’s some decent ideas (so far) going on here. I’m still not so sure about FIRST CLASS. When I was reading it, I chuckled to myself about the POTTER comments. I’m also oddly interested in seeing Reynolds talk to the audience. So guys and gals, what’s the verdict?