The X-Men universe as we know it on film has officially been reset following the events in X-Men: Days of Future Past….
Unlike the Marvel Cinematic Universe that started several years ago with a clear connection between movies and a shared universe between all the different characters, that hasn’t always been the case in other superhero franchises — for example the X-Men movies, which are owned and developed by 21st Century FOX.
While the first three X-Men movies all follow the same time line — X-Men, X2 and X-Men: The Last Stand — the story took a slight detour with the blast from the past feature X-Men: First Class.
That film was followed up by the critically acclaimed feature X-Men: Days of Future Past, which seemingly destroyed all the previous mythology with a time traveling adventure that ultimately wiped out any past misdeeds in the series.
Now for the first time, X-Men producer and writer Simon Kinberg is confirming that what you saw at the end of X-Men: Days of Future Past with Professor Xavier, Jean Grey, Cyclops and everybody else still alive is the same universe you’ll enter again for the new film X-Men: Apocalypse and any other ‘X’ movies that are released.
“The idea is that we’ve sort of reset the timeline after Days of Future Past in some ways, and if not erased, certainly allowed for change from [the original X-Men movie), 2, 3, everything from Days of Future Past forward. Everything we set now becomes canon,” Kinberg told MTV.
Following X-Men: Apocalypse, producers are already gearing up for the release of Deadpool starring Ryan Reynolds and then Gambit starring Channing Tatum and the plan is to involve both of those characters in the X-Men universe as well.
Those two films are included in the new mutant canon created after X-Men: Days of Future Past.
“The Gambit movie, the Deadpool movie, will exist in a world that acknowledges whatever happened in Days of Future Past and moving forward. There will be interplay between different characters in different movies,” Kinberg said.
“We have a clear sense of the directions we want to take them in and in my mind at least, how we could start to cross-pollinate sort of with those characters that have their standalone movies.”
It looks like the X-Men movies will be following suit to what DC is doing now with Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice and a whole new franchise series of films that will copy what Marvel has done so ingeniously for the past few years.
The X-Men series will be the same with Deadpool kicking things off in February 2016 followed by the release of X-Men: Apocalypse in May 2016.
