Simon Kinberg offers update on ‘X-Men’ franchise

Producer Simon Kinberg has been deeply involved with 20th Century Fox ‘X-Men’ franchise for some time now. He had a hand in writing some of the early films before helping reboot the franchise with ‘X-Men: First Class’ back in 2011. Kinberg is still actively working in the ‘X’ world and in recent interviews has offered updates on where Fox plan to take the franchise in the future.

Kingberg on ‘Gambit’

‘It’s in active development,’ Kinberg said. ‘It’s a movie that we hope will be ready to go by the end of this year and shoot next year. We have two or three X-Men related movies this year so it can wait for a moment. The process has been that Channing [Tatum] is as determined about getting the character right as Ryan Reynolds was about Deadpool and Hugh [Jackman] was about this Logan movie. We know that when we get those right, the movie succeeds so we want to make sure we get Gambit right because we want him to be the beginning of a whole new franchise.’

Kinberg on re-casting Wolverine

‘We haven’t started talking about that,’ he explained. ‘The truth is, we really approached this as, this is really the end of Hugh Jackman playing Wolverine and it very well be the end of Wolverine in the movies. Beyond that, we’ll figure out if there is some other version of him. We haven’t gone down that road. We really approached this as if it were the end.’

Kinberg on directing the next ‘X-Men’ movie

‘I can tell you that the stories of me directing it are premature, but I can also tell you that we are in prep on what the next X-Men movie will be. We can’t confirm what the next movie will be, but I can talk a little about, frankly, what I would do differently if I were to make X-Men: The Last Stand again, which had the Dark Phoenix storyline. I think the big mistake we made with that movie – and if anybody is to blame for it it’s the writer, and I was one of them – it’s that we made the Dark Phoenix the subplot of that film, instead of making it the main plot. The Dark Phoenix story is the biggest, and in many ways the most epic, saga of the X-Men comics, so you can’t make that the B-plot of the movie. If we were lucky enough to have the opportunity to re-tell that story – and certainly, what we did with the end of Days of Future Past gave us the opportunity to re-tell it – I think we all would want to give it the justice and the space to breath that it deserves.’

It seems like there’s a lot going on in the ‘X-Men’ world right now. Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart have retired. Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy are at the end of their contracts. This is a real period of change. Where would you like to see the franchise go next?