While Bryan Singer has not been shy about tweeting set photos from X-Men: Days Of Future Past, we didn’t get any plot information until today, and it’s some pretty interesting stuff. And hidden in those plot details is some interesting hints that Fox might be trying to build its own Marvel Cinematic Universe.
First, consider this: In most of the Wolverine trailers, Jean Grey is in there, making it clear they’re spinning the movie directly from the events in X-Men: The Last Stand. Secondly, Fox spent the money to put the band back together for X-Men: Days Of Future Past; at this point, nobody in the original cast comes cheap.
Thirdly, Fox went out of their way to bury the hatchet with Bryan Singer. Keep in mind, Singer and Fox split on what was rumored to be spectacularly ugly circumstances, because Fox decided to jerk Singer’s chain over whether he was directing X-Men 3 after delivering a huge hit on time and on a limited budget, not once, but twice. True, Singer hasn’t lit the cinematic world on fire since then, but if he wanted to stay away, he could.
Finally, Fox has been actively working on an X-Force movie since March, and The Wolverine is on track to pull in $65 million next weekend according to box office prognosticators and is probably going to outgross the first Wolverine movie. Which means that out of six films in the total franchise, Fox has had six movies that have made them money and a strong backstory to work from.
Add to that the massive success of The Avengers and Iron Man 3 cleaning house in May to the tune of $1.2 billion worldwide, and yeah, Fox is thinking big. It has enough “franchises” here, between Wolverine, X-Force, X-Men, and First Class to essentially make a movie every year or two if they felt like it. And since they have the rights to basically every mutant in Marvel’s stable, they’ve got a lot they can keep putting out.
So don’t be surprised if there are a lot more mutants on the silver screen. Fox doesn’t have much else to roll out for your summer entertainment.