X-Men 1 & 2 director
Bryan Singer should get the kudos for the genius idea of setting
X-Men: First Class during the 60's Cuban Missile Crisis and having now been accepted back into the Fox family with open arms, he has made it well known he wants to once again direct a movie in the saga after he's done with next summer's
Jack the Giant Killer. Whether that'll be a Wolverine story or an X-Men 4 (a sequel to Brett Ratner's X3: The Last Stand) or X-Men: Second Class is not yet clear and I'm sure Singer doesn't quite know himself as all the pieces haven't yet fallen into place. But for now his interest lies in the 60's timeline and he's talking up future possibilities and seems excited about where the new characters could go next;
I dont know if every movie has to be a history lesson. But theres a lot of history to cover. If we sequelized this, it could inhabit a whole world of the 20th century... When [First Class] happened, Kennedy had not been assassinated and the Vietnam War hadnt happened yet. Whats really interesting about the 60s setting is the civil rights movement... You dont need to hit people over the head with in every movie or every scene... But having them at the core of the conflict is what I think makes it all work.
When X-Men: First Class was initially pitched - the civil rights movement was said to be the big 60's backdrop setting, even more so than than the Cuban Missile Crisis but somewhere along the line that idea was dropped. Indeed Xavier (
James McAvoy) and Magneto (
Michael Fassbender) were supposed to be reminiscent of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X but this never really panned out and black superheroes didn't get much of a look-in. We should also remember that X-Men: First Class director
Matthew Vaughn has said in the many interviews he has done for his movie that he would be interested in tackling JFK's assassination for a sequel, probably in a Watchmen-esque fashion where his death was caused via the hands mind of Magneto. He told
Hitfix;
Ive got some ideas for the opening for the next film. I thought it would be fun to open with the Kennedy Assassination, and we reveal that the magic bullet was controlled by Magneto... That would explain the physics of it, and we see that hes pissed off because Kennedy took all the credit for saving the world and mutants werent even mentioned. And we could go from there, and Ive got some fun ideas about what other mutants to bring in. I dont want to tempt fate, though. If the films a hit, of course Id be interested. I really enjoyed making it.
In particular, Vaughn told
Superhero Hype that he's game for a sequel if Fox are;
Yeah, if the films a hit, Id be very interested in doing a sequel... I really, really enjoyed the team I had on it were great, and the hard thing is creating a new franchise, so if it works, it would be fun. My ideas are much bigger for the next one. Ive got some really big Im surprised everyone is calling this a really big epic movie, and Im thinking, Wait until you view the next one if you think this is epic, the next one you wont believe what happens.
Vaughn said he would only want one new character introduced;
We will only have one more new character. I wont say who heI wont say who he or she is! But we will only be bringing one more new character in. Because, I think, as Professor X is in a wheelchair, Magneto needs to have a nemesis he can fight with. Someone that will be his equal. I know who it is. It would be nice if I could say something, but I cant, mate!,
Two of the credited screenwriters
Ashley Miller and
Zack Stentz have name-dropped X-character
Cable, who may or may not be who Vaughn was talking about and it's interesting that the character's co-creator
Rob Liefeld wrote on Twitter a while back that he would love
Stephen Lang to play the character;
Dear 20th Century Fox, Please sign Steven Lang as Cable and put him in your next X-men film. Thanks, Rob,
We would also imagine both Vaughn and Singer won't be able to help themselves adding
Hugh Jackman's Wolverine in there somewhere.
But for either Vaughn or Singer to make an X-Men: Second Class it is all going to depend on how audiences take to the 60's set movie. After a week on release in the U.S. the movie has hit $70 million on a $160 million budget ($144 million from worldwide tickets) which isn't at all spectacular and way down on the previous films but this weekend's percentage drop will be the key. Has word of mouth been strong enough for the film to endure? That's the question going into the next few days and perhaps on Monday morning we will know whether a sequel is happening. In my previous article on X-Men: First Class I called for Fox to sequelize X-Men: First Class with Matthew Vaughn and sequelize X-Men 3: The Last Stand with Bryan Singer and at the same time dropping the Wolverine saga after it's forthcoming stand-alone film. Stay tuned to OWF over the next week as we have a few X-special articles on the way....