When X-Men: Days of the Future Past was released earlier this year the franchise was at a definite crossroads. 20th Century Fox took a huge gamble by reuniting an enormous cast of returning actors with a production budget of over $200 million dollars. If the film was received badly it could have crushed the property. However the movie performed extraordinarily well, grossing over $745 million dollars at the global box office and critics loved it as well (read our review). During the leadup to the film’s release, director Bryan Singer (whose legal entanglements have since cleared up) openly talked about his and writer Simon Kinberg’s plans for the next movie, X-Men: Apocalypse. Those plans were confirmed with the after-credits scene which featured a young En Sabah Nur, the young Apocalypse, in ancient Egypt.
Filming for X-Men: Apocalypse will begin in April 2015, in Montreal. According to ScreenRant, set construction will begin in December and all signs are pointing to the core members of the First Class team returning including Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy, Nicholas Hoult, and Jennifer Lawrence, and perhaps some members of the older cast. (It seems that Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine is a given at least.) Singer previously gave his thoughts on the upcoming sequel to Slashfilm:
We’re going to deal (with) the notion of ancient mutants – the fact they were born and existed thousands of years ago. But it’ll be a contemporary movie – well, it’ll take place in the ’80s… The ’80s is a period now – it’s hard for me to believe that! ‘Apocalypse’ will have more of the mass destruction that ‘X-Men’ films, to date, have not relied upon. There’s definitely now a character and a story that allow room for that kind of spectacle…One thing that interests me is the notion of ancient mutants. What would people thousands of years ago, without the benefit of science, think mutants were? And more importantly, what would mutants thousands of years ago think they were? Gods? Titans? Angels? Demons? And if such mutants did exist thousands of years ago, what became of them? Did one survive?
This will be the X-Men franchise’s first disaster movie. It almost sounds as if there will be destruction on a Man of Steel scale. Hopefully much like the last film, all the set pieces and action serves the plot’s larger purpose. Apocalypse is one of the first mutants in Marvel lore and it seems that Singer is going to give him a serious god complex. The film will be set in the 80’s which should be fun for the crew, which did a great job with 70’s themed production design in Days of the Future Past. Even more exciting is the introduction of the core members of the X-Men who have yet to be seen in the franchise’s new timeline. Expect to see Cyclops and Jean Grey, and judging by past comments it is very likely we could see characters such as Angel, Nightcrawler and Gambit.
X-Men: Apocalypse will open in theaters on May 27th, 2016. Who would you like to see included in the sequel? Let us know on the comment boards, and !
Sources: Slashfilm, ScreenRant