The X-Men reboot has a writer (Michael Lesslie, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes) and a director (Jake Schreier, Thunderbolts*), and perhaps even the beginnings of a cast.
While Marvel Studios seemingly has plans for this movie to be what the next Saga of storytelling is built around—we have to believe it will be dubbed the "Mutant Saga"—the original big screen X-Men will take centre stage in Avengers: Doomsday next summer.
Still, as production starts ramping up, the neXt X-Men movie has been given a working title. As a reminder, these are used during production and sometimes mean very little, but occasionally offer some insights into the story or comic book inspiration for a superhero movie.
According to The Cosmic Circus, in the case of X-Men, the working title is "Chunnel."
That may sound like gibberish, but Chunnel is often used to refer to the Channel Tunnel, an undersea railway tunnel that connects England to France. It's only been featured in a handful of Marvel Comics, with New X-Men #129 and #130 among the most noteworthy.
As the site reminds us, "In this storyline, Fantomex seeks sanctuary at the X-Corporation in Paris, having stolen information about the Weapons X project while in the Chunnel. He asks the X-Men for help destroying Weapon XII, which is located within the tunnel and is ultimately uncovered to be Weapon XIII, who has escaped similarly to Wolverine.
"In these two issues, the Chunnel features significantly, as Charles Xavier and Jean Grey return with Fantomex to the crime scene and are forced to battle against an army of mindless creatures."
The Channel Tunnel opened in 1994, the same year an X-Men video game was released for the Sega Game Gear. Marvel UK/Panini Comics also published X-Men #1, a title featuring reprints of U.S. comics, including Chris Claremont and Jim Lee's iconic X-Men #1. The cover of that reprint features Wolverine, Cyclops, Storm, Rogue, Gambit, and Professor X.
Fantomex, created by Grant Morrison and Igor Kordey, is a genetically engineered mutant with superhuman agility, reflexes, and misdirection abilities. He possesses a sentient external nervous system called E.V.A., which can manifest as a flying saucer. A product of the Weapon Plus program, he's a fun character with ties to X-Force as well.
Again, this might mean absolutely nothing, but it sure is fun to speculate. Many X-Men stories have taken place in the UK and France, so figuring this one out is likely to be easier said than done.
In other X-Men-related news, scooper Daniel Richtman is reporting that Kelsey Grammer's Beast "has a pretty big role" in Avengers: Doomsday. The Marvels set the stage for that, and in the comics, Hank McCoy was a member of the Illuminati attempting to tackle the Multiverse's Incursions.
"I think you will see that continues in our next few movies with some X-Men players that you might recognize," Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige teased last November. "Right after that, the whole story of Secret Wars really leads us into a new age of mutants and of the X-Men. Again, [it’s] one of those dreams come true. We finally have the X-Men back."
Marvel Studios' X-Men reboot doesn't have a confirmed release date but will likely kick off the next Saga of storytelling post-Avengers: Secret Wars.