Posts Tagged ‘Fox’

Days of Future Past loses Vaughn, may add Singer

Posted in News and Editorials, tagged , , , on October 25, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Matthew Vaughn directed X-Men: First Class and was slated to continue with the sequel, Days of Future Past… but he’s stepped down from directing and will stay on as a producer. Bryan Singer, who gave us X1 and a producer on FC, is the one FOX wants to direct Days of Future Past.

While X1 was a great movie, I’m just not sure about Singer doing FC’s sequel. FC had a different tone from X1 and a different slant which leant itself to becoming a reboot vehicle. I want them to continue in this vein and I want the reboot because I want X3 wiped from the records (which was Ratner’s fault, not Singer).

Right now I’m on the fence about this news and we’ll have to wait and see who actually ends up directing and more of the plot details.

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Rumor Mill: Jean Grey in The Wolverine?

Posted in News and Editorials, tagged , , , , , , , on October 21, 2012| 1 Comment »

Famke Janssen as Jean Grey

Famke Janssen as Jean Grey

ComicBookMovie recently posted a rumor that Famke Janssen is going to reprise her role as Jean Grey in a cameo appearance in The Wolverine. This could possibly tie The Wolverine in with Days of Future Past and how they are going to change things up.While I can see where this might be coming from, and how it could might work, depending on when and how her cameo takes place (flash forward maybe?), it’s one of those things that could make or wreck the film in regards to the overall X-Men Cinemagraphic Universe.

Jean Grey is dead via the end of X3 (not that death has ever stopped her) and she turned into Phoenix at the end of X2… so if this is a flash forward then it would have to take place sometime before X2. If it’s about time travel, or Kitty DOFP style mental Time Travel, in X2 Kitty was called “a little girl who could walk through walls” meaning she had to be even younger in X1. (I still don’t know how Kitty will work in DOFP since she won’t even been born yet unless they skip WAY into the future). But then flashing forward to X1-ish means we’re that much closer to a full reboot of the X movies.

If Jean Grey is time traveling, that, again, opens a big can of worms of rebooting which could hopefully only be a good thing.

If The Wolverine actually takes place post X-3, well then, that’s a boat load of confusion as most of thought that this would be a prequel to the X-movies (like Origins but takes place after Origins ala the Easter Egg at the end of that movie). So not only is the movie moved, but Jean Grey is apparently back from the dead (again, not a big stretch). Though now we have total fail on the reboot option.

The biggest problem with all this is that Famke is older now, it’s just fact. X-Men came out in 2000, over a decade ago, and she looks older and more mature from her X1 self. This can be worked around, with makeup and stuff, but they need to be very clear on when and how all of this is happening, esp since the rumor is that only Jean Grey might be in the Wolverine (unless the whole Patrick Stewart thing being in DOFP is actually a cameo in Wolverine, but that only helps a little). Of course, if it’s option three and post X3 then this isn’t an issue.

Really, what Fox needs to do is sit back and say “we made some X-Men movies and while some were good, some weren’t, now we’re going to start all over again with First Class, literally”. It’s not like people are going to look on them any less, just look at Batman, he’s had several films totally unrelated to each other and it’s been pure win. Fox doesn’t have to attempt to save face or anything like that here, it’s been a decade since X1, you have new actors who literally owned their roles in First Class… go from here and leave the first X movies as Alt Uni’s… the comics have tons of them!

So, personally, I hope this is just a rumor… but if it isn’t, then maybe this is part of the Easter Egg and totally brilliant! We’ll have to see in July…

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I like a man who can own up…

Posted in News and Editorials, tagged , , , on October 10, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Thanks again to CinemaBlend for cutting an interview with Mark Miller down to size for us. Miller is Fox’s answer to Whedon in the Comic Book Movie genre. He’s there to whip the X-Men and Fantastic Four franchises back into shape.

I’m all for this.

The problem is, is Miller the one to get this done? Not having read any of his work, I just don’t know. I watched the Kick Ass movie and it was decent, I liked the spin and a few great scenes, but overall it didn’t move me to want to read the comics. As for the Ultimates, don’t read those either, mostly cause I don’t care for some of the story lines I’ve seen are in them (though I don’t know how much of those are directly Miller’s creations).

The saving grace here is this:

There have been some poor decisions in the past, but you also have to remember that there have been some excellent ones too. Bryan Singer’s X-Men for example, I think revolutionized superhero movies. It pre-dated Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, and I think you forget how close that was chronologically to Batman and Robin! To open with a Holocaust scene in a superhero movie was just unheard of. Fox get a lot of flak for the films which didn’t work out, and quite rightly, but you forget that they’ve done some really great stuff too. I’m thinking specifically of X-Men, X-Men 2 and X-Men: First Class.

He’s right, we give X3 and XOW so much flak cause they are just horrible films (not going to even go there with FF) but really, X-Men was a game changer in the Comic Book Movie genre. I remember watching the movie in the theatres and being totally blown away by it. Granted, it had its flaws, but overall, it was a great film which did its best and provided so much promise (some of which was delivered on… some, not so much).

I’d even go as far to say that we might not have gotten a Batman Begins without an X-Men.

As for Miller, I’m glad that he can recognize this and fully admit it. This bodes well! Now… if we can get him in with the producer lady who wants to merge the universes and then get Marvel interested in cornering the Super Hero tv market with an X-Men tv series… yes, I have a one-track mind.

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Prospects

Posted in News and Editorials, tagged , , , , , on October 8, 2012| Leave a Comment »

CinemBlend carried and article discussion from a Crave Online interview and the nuts and bolts of it is that the lady who has produced all the X-Men movies is up for crossing the streams.

As I mentioned in my previous post about why I chose to have this series “air” on Fox, I mentioned that the ideal situation would be for Fox and Marvel to make a deal to produce the tv-series since Fox holds the cinematic licensing rights to the characters but Marvel has a better grasp on bringing those characters to life. Apparently the producer is up for such a cross-over/team-up on a larger scale ala the films.

Many commenters have cried gold-digger as Avengers has done so well and everyone wants a piece of that pie. The way I look at it, if it gets us an awesome X-Men/Avengers team-up movie (or closer to an X-Men live action tv series) then they can gold dig all they want.

The real problem is with the fact that Avengers is tonaly different from X-Men, especially in how X-Men attempted to make a more realistic spin on the comics while Avengers, while more realistic than the comics, is a lot more apt to ‘just go with it’. Also, unless they work it with the reboot supposedly happening with Days of Future Past, most of the main characters everyone knows are dead or been horribly mis-characterized (not to mention the actors are older and moved on).

Still, this could work, in the hands of the right writers, director, etc, a crossover movie more epic than Avengers is possible. All of the origin’s are out of the way for the Avengers team, depending on what we see in more X-Men films, those origins should be out of the way too. All you really need is a reason for them to either team up and/or fight each other and just let them go to town!

Personally, I’d have the movie start with the Avengers stumbling into an X-Men vs Brotherhood scenario and Rogue just kicking the butts of the Avengers (which is totally canon)… but then I am biased.

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Channel Surfing

Posted in Behind the Scenes, tagged , , , , on August 29, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Yesterday’s discussion of the new live-action tv series in the works at ABC made me rethink my idea to have this series ‘air’ on FOX. I’ve decided that my first instinct was correct, FOX is the most likely network station to pick up X-Men as a live action tv series (should the universe align to make it so).

The reason being is that we already know 20th Century Fox owns the rights for X-Men which is why they produce and distribute the movies and not Marvel Studios. This extends to television as Fox sued Marvel over Mutant X which was basically X-Men with a ‘government experimentation background’ ala Dark Angel which came out a year earlier. (Come to think of it, Max pretty much becomes a Rogue analogue but that’s another discussion).

Whedon’s show will be on ABC because ABC is owned by Disney and Disney owns Marvel Entertainment and in turn has distribution rights with Marvel for anything Marvel still has licensing rights to. But if Marvel wanted to create a live action X-Men series they would have to either get the rights back from Fox or make a deal with them.

With two more X-Men movies on the horizon, the rights aren’t going to revert any time soon. Also, Fox is not one to give up licensing lightly, the whole business with Daredevil not withstanding. If they even consider letting Marvel buy out the licensing agreement it probably won’t be worth it to Marvel to pay their price tag. But then, who knows.

So the final option left for Marvel is to make a deal with Fox to co-produce an X-Men series. Marvel Entertainment was involved in the production of X-Men: First Class so there is at least a working relationship there. Fox would obviously want it to be on one of their channels, so either FOX network or FX. Considering that X-Men would be more a mainstream and young adult friendly show their best bet is to put it on a network channel.

Now, this assumes that Marvel is involved with the tv series because since Fox has the licensing for X-Men they could go ahead with a tv show without Marvel’s input. Again, either FOX network or FX, network being the most viable choice.

So, here is the million dollar question: What is the likelihood of an actual X-Men live action tv-series?

Fox always has been more friendly to scifi and fantasy tv shows than other channels (not counting CW’s lineup of young adult emo fests). They know that Heroes was popular and Alphas is currently a hit… despite the fact that Alphas is Heroes without their budget and Heroes was Mutant X with a bigger budget and Mutant X was X-Men without the licensing… and where was I? Oh, yes, the audience is out there as long as they make good content which is accessible not only to fans but to newcomers as well.

Fox is still interested in the X-Men franchise with two movies on the way, so developing it further into a tv series is not a big stretch, esp since this new S.H.I.E.L.D. series is direct competition.

That being said, I think it’s unlikely at this point that Fox is even considering an X-Men tv series. With the movies coming out they’ll probably want to focus on the film franchise. If Days of Future Past and Wolverine do well then they’ll want to continue to work that way. If they don’t do well, then they probably won’t want to tie too much into an fx heavy, possibly costly, tv show like X-Men would be (though in my fan fic I attempt to take this into account and keep the fx budget down).

Maybe in ten years once the new set of movies have done their run, Marvel’s tv show and Phase Two and possible Phase Three have also ended, then Fox might look into developing a series.

Until then… well, that’s why we have fan fic.

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