DEADPOOL Sequel Expected To Start Filming Early Next Year; Fox Happy With X-MEN: APOCALYPSE Box Office
Simon Kinberg recently shared a few updates on a handful of his upcoming projects, including Deadpool 2, Wolverine 3, Gambit, & Legion. He also talks X-Men: Apocalypse!
Last Wednesday, at the 42nd Annual Saturn Awards, producer/writer Simon Kinberg was honored with The George Pal Memorial Award for his extraordinary work in several different genres, which include, but are not limited to, his contributions to the long-running and wildly successful X-Men film franchise, Deadpool, The Martian, and Star Wars: Rebels.
Prior to the ceremony, Collider managed to catch up with Kinberg for a few minutes and learned quite a bit on the status of a handful of Kinberg's upcoming projects, namely the highly anticipated Deadpool sequel. When asked for an update on the film's development, Kinberg revealed that a first draft of the script is nearly complete: "The guys Wernick & Reese are working on the script, and we hope to have the script very soon." Well, that's certainly good news and when asked on when they planned on starting production, Kinberg added: "We hope to shoot the movie sometime at the beginning of next year." With that start date in mind, it sounds like they may be aiming to release the film on either October 6, 2017 or March 2, 2018, with the 2018 date being the more likely bet. They also have June 29, 2018 booked for a future Marvel release, but it's more likely that summer date has been reserved for the next X-Men sequel, although they may end up moving from that date with Universal Pictures' Jurassic World sequel arriving the week before.
Speaking on the production of James Mangold's Wolverine 3, which is currently filming in New Orleans, Kinberg was especially vague: "I can only tell you that it's going extremely well." He did share the pretty solid reasoning behind the cryptic nature of the entire shoot: "We really want it to be discovered, the way that we used to watch movies a long time ago when you didn't know everything about them before you went to see them." Well, set photos have leaked, revealing Hugh Jackman & Patrick Stewart in action, but outside of that, we really don't know what's going on.
On another note, while somewhat underwhelming, it sounds like 20th Century Fox is actually pretty happy with the box office performance of X-Men: Apocalypse, which has currently grossed over $515 million worldwide and if you include Deadpool, is the third highest grossing X-Men film ever: "I think they are happy, I mean the truth is, Days of Future Past is sort of an outlier for an X-Men movie. We never made more than $500 million dollars before and Days was kind of like our Avengers where we sort of brought this mega cast together. We hoped the movie would do the same as Days of Future Past, but we had a feeling maybe it would, maybe it wouldn't. It's a different kind of film." Considering the film's production budget was around $178 million and it's on course to earn over triple that by summer's end, it's pretty easy to see why they'd consider Apocalypse's performance a win, especially with other big budget sequels underperforming across the board this year.
As for the future of the X-Men franchise, Kinberg doesn't divulge too much. He simply once again touches on Deadpool 2 & Wolverine 3 before teasing Josh Boone's New Mutants movie and the future of the X-Men: "We're really, really serious about a making the Gambit movie. And figuring out what the next X-Men movie is going to be. That's all I can tell you." Sounds like we're in for a whole lot of X-Men goodness in the next couple of years and if it turns out, that there's actually some truth to the Marvel/Fox rumor from earlier, then that's just icing on the cake.
Kinberg also adds a small update on his TV slate, Hellfire & Legion, saying that while they're still figuring out the former, the latter is shaping up really nicely: "Noah Hawley, the creator of Fargo, wrote and directed the pilot, which is extraordinary and unlike anything you will ever see in the genre." He doesn't know when the show will air, but spring 2017 is probable. Kinberg concludes the brief chat by revealing that he will indeed be at San Diego Comic-Con this year, but stops short of revealing whether or not he'll be there announcing anything.
Check out Kinberg's comments in the video below (you may have to disable AdBlock):
So, what do you guys think? Sound off with your thoughts below!
Based upon Marvel Comics’ most unconventional anti-hero, DEADPOOL tells the origin story of former Special Forces operative turned mercenary Wade Wilson, who after being subjected to a rogue experiment that leaves him with accelerated healing powers, adopts the alter ego Deadpool. Armed with his new abilities and a dark, twisted sense of humor, Deadpool hunts down the man who nearly destroyed his life.
Deadpool features:
Director: Tim Miller
Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson/Deadpool
Morena Baccarin as Vanessa Carlysle/Copycat
Ed Skrein as Francis/Ajax
Gina Carano as Angel Dust
T.J. Miller as Jack Hammer/Weasel
Brianna Hildebrand as Ellie Phimister/Negasonic Teenage Warhead
Stefan Kapicic as Piotr Rasputin/Colossus
Leslie Uggams as Blind Al
Jed Rees as The Recruiter
Karan Soni as Dopinder
Taylor Hickson as Meghan Orlovsky
Deadpool is out on Blu-ray/DVD & Digital HD NOW!