X-Men: The Dark Phoenix Saga Movie To Follow Apocalypse?
Bryan Singer to re-tell X-Men's seminal comics storyline?
Bryan Singer's continuing desire for the world to forget X-Men 3: The Last Stand ever existed (i.e. - the one original cast X-Men movie he didn't direct) looks likely to ramp up a gear with his next two films.
As teased in EW this week, much of X-Men: Apocalypse (May 27) will centre around a young Jean Grey's struggles to come to terms with her rapidly evolving powers, which in the comics ultimately lead her to becoming the Dark Phoenix.
Going one step further, Heroic Hollywood's own sources claimed days later that The Dark Phoenix saga will follow Apocalypse as Singer's next X-Men movie. So essentially, Singer will be giving The Last Stand another lick of do-over celluloid.
As you'll recall, that movie focused on a watered down, thinly veiled adaptation of the seminal classic storyline that left many comic book fans and Singer himself upset at how events and characters were portrayed.
He's since spent the best part of this decade fixing those wrongs; producing and conceptualising the X-Men: First Class reboot that took the saga back to the 60s with a whole new cast, then following that up with X-Men: Days Of Future Past that utilisied Hugh Jackman's time-traveling Wolverine to bridge Singer's old cast and new one together to erase past mistakes and effectively wipe X-Men 3: The Last Stand from continuity and give the saga a whole new clean slate to play with.
His soon to be released X-Men: Apocalypse looks to re-introduce younger versions of the X-Men he originally brought to the screen (new versions of Cyclops, Jean Grey, Storm, Nightcrawler, etc) and it now looks like he's still not done with his patch-up work.
Key quotes The Dark Phoenix Saga is the direction they are heading...
Producer Simon Kinberg (who himself as co-screenwriter was partly responsible for the Dark Phoenix failure in X-Men 3) teased IGN that further do-overs were ok;
I think everything that hasnt been told from First Class and Days of Future Past is up for grabs going forward, so it would absolutely be a story we could tell in a different way,
Singer himself told EW about Jean Grey;
And Jean -- she has not only her telekenisis and her telepathy but she also knows inherently that something darker and more powerful is growing inside her and she doesnt quite know what it is".
One key thing to remember is that Singer is a huge fan of the 90s X-Men animated tv series and that's where he first fell in love with the universe and not the Marvel Comics, so expect the re-telling of the saga to be heavily influenced by that;