Rumours have been swirling for a while now about the future of the ‘X-Men’ franchise. After the disappointing box office returns of last entry ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’ there have been talk of reboots, spin-offs or simply resting the franchise altogether.
Last night actress Sophie Turner (‘Game of Thrones’) appeared on the red carpet at the BAFTA awards in London and was asked about the future of the franchise. Turner confirmed that she was ‘soon’ to return to her role as Jean Grey.
‘We’re about to start shooting the next X-Men, we’ve just finished shooting Season 7 of [Game of] Thrones, and I’ve got a couple of movies to do before X-Men starts. And then we go on to Season 8.’
Rumours have focussed on an ‘X-Men’ film subtitled ‘Supernova’ which is constructing sets in Montreal where previous X entries have filmed. With a ‘New Mutants’ film also in pre-production there has been no solid news on what form ‘Supernova’ would take.
Many expect the next film in the main ‘X-Men’ franchise to follow the story of Dark Phoenix. During ‘Apocalypse’ we saw Jean Grey exhibiting the first signs of the Phoenix force which was also shown in ‘X-Men: The Last Stand’. Writer/producer Simon Kinberg has been open with the press about his wish to redo the story after the issues faced by its last adaption.
‘X-Men: Apocalypse’ took a disappointing $155.4M at the North American box office. Thanks to international popularity the film was able to make $543.9M worldwide. A drop of over 25% worldwide from the $747.9M worldwide gross of previous entry ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’.