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”.

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