20th Century Fox’s X-Men franchise continues to grow 17 years on since the very first X-Men was released in 2000.
The X-Men series has come a long way and has experienced a lot of changes over the years. Over the years, the X-Men series has gone through a number of notable changes. 2006 was the year when the original X-Men trilogy concluded and Fox made an attempt to launch a new series of films which would explore the origin stories of some of the key X-Men characters but after receiving a negative response to X-Men: Origins Wolverine the studio decided not to progress with their planned origins series.
In 2011, 20th Century Fox released X-Men: First Class which began a prequel series of X-Men films which later was concluded with last year’s X-Men: Apocalypse but after the release of X-Men: First Class the studio also released a solo Wolverine film which lead up to X-Men: Days of the Future Past which bought both younger and older X-Men together on the big screen which created an X-Men Multiverse with three universes full of X-Men related stories with the main universe leading up to this year’s Logan, an alternate universe taking place in the 1980’s and 90’s based on younger X-Men and the Deadpool/X-Force universe.
20th Century Fox has plenty of X-Men related properties in the works such as X-Men: Supernova, Deadpool 2, Josh Boone’s X-Men: The New Mutants, and the recently announced X-Force project. Still, with many of these movies in early development or pre-production – and without release dates – the future of the X-Men Multiverse is still unwritten. However, there are certain characters and teams the filmmakers may be looking to adapt and include in the near future.
In an interview with ComicBook promoting Logan, X-Men writer/producer Simon Kinberg revealed which comic book teams they’re considering including in upcoming projects. When asked about the future of the X-Men Multiverse Kinberg said:
“We have a sense of where each of all of the existing characters go from Deadpool to New Mutants to the mainland X-Men movies to potentially even X-23. Then, there’s other characters, like X-Flight, like Exiles… There’s a lot of characters to mine going forward. We’re still sort of in this phase where now we’ve completed the Wolverine story with Logan and we begin hopefully with New Mutants and eventually Gambit and continue with Deadpool”.
ComicBook corrected that Kinberg meant Alpha Flight rather than X-Flight, since there isn’t a team called X-Flight within the Marvel/X-Men comic book universe.
The Alpha Flight was Introduced in 1979, it is a team of Canadian superheroes – with members such as Aurora, Guardian, Northstar, Sasquatch, and Puck – working for the government’s Department H. The Exiles, meanwhile, debuted much more recently in 2001 and features a cast of superheroes – including Blink, Beast, Forge, and Polaris – from different dimensions who attempt to correct hiccups in alternate worlds and timelines within the Marvel Multiverse.
Looking back at Simon Kinberg’s comments, it seems one or both of the teams could appear in either an upcoming main or alternate X-Men Universe film or receive their own spinoff as Fox builds out their larger universe. Since neither Alpha Flight nor Exiles have yet appeared in any films within the X-Men Multiverse, fans of these particular teams will be excited to see them come to life on the big screen. Going a step further, the possibility of the Alpha Flight being adapted to Fox’s mutant universe could perhaps hint the studio is looking to expand their cinematic world to include alternate worlds and timelines.
So what do you think of the X-Men Multiverse? Do you think Fox should introduce Alpha Flight? Comment below.
