Looking even closely through
the new Empire magazine, producer
Lauren Shuler Donner has unexpectedly revealed that sequels to
X-Men 3: The Last Stand are still in 'active development' at Fox;
"We took the treatment to Fox and they love it... And X4 leads into X5".
I've said it for years now, Fox made a huge creative mistake when they decided to produce their first
Wolverine stand alone movie as a prequel, because I will contend until the day that I die that the way
Hugh Jackman's character was left devastated, heartbroken and in utter turmoil at the death of Jean Grey at the end of Brett Ratner's movie makes for a far more interesting character to explore than ruining the mystery of his back story. The X-Men franchise could have easily hit a dozen movies before a reboot was ever needed but I'm happy to hear X-Men 4 hasn't been forgotten about and is still actively being developed in someway. There's no mention of who wrote the treatment but I would guess it's probably
Bryan Singer himself, who did the same for X-Men: First Class and seems to be circling a hands-on return to the franchise once he has made his fantasy re-imagining Jack and the Giant Killer this year. Hopefully then we haven't seen the end of
Patrick Stewart's Xavier,
Ian McKellen's Magneto,
Rebecca Romijn-Stamos' Mystique,
Anna Paquin's Rogue,
Ellen Page's Kitty Pryde,
Kelsey Grammar's Beast and er, yeah,
Halle Berry's Storm...
Donner also said in regards to the long-gestating Deadpool spin-off from X-Men Origins: Wolverine;
"It's a total reboot... We're either going to pretend that didn't happen - or mock it, which he could It's insane, it's definitely comedy, But it's an R script, it's really irreverent and violent. Right away, we're out of the X-Men world".