Before Marvel set up its own studio and began producing its own movies, beginning with ‘Iron Man’, the comic publisher licensed out some of its bigger name properties to other studios and unfortunately for fans, some of those studios have retained their rights.  Sony is looking to ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ to kick off its own universe of movies, including ‘Sinister Six’ and ‘Venom’, not to mention four additional ‘Spider-Man’ movies after this summer’s ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2′.  Fox is relaunching ‘The Fantastic Four’ and refocusing on its somewhat dormant ‘X-Men’ franchise. Writer/producer Simon Kinberg states that following the blockbuster success of ‘The Avengers’, Fox is re-examining its mutant properties hoping to emulate that success.

“Yeah, they definitely understand what they have now in a way that—having worked on the ‘X-Men’ Fox movies since 2003, [it was a] different regime, really different culture inside the studio [back then], but outside the studio like you say, the juggernauts, the big movies of every summer are [now] superhero movies.  We’re gonna have three big superhero movies in the span of like a month and a half between ‘Cap 2’, ‘Spider-Man’, and us.  So Fox does understand that they are sitting on this massive universe with the ‘X-Men’, also with ‘Fantastic Four’ obviously.  But they definitely have a sense of it and there’s a real interest and appetite for how to explore and expand that world into other movies, into spinoffs, into different time periods, the whole gamut.”

There have been rumors of a ‘Deadpool’ movie for years now, since Ryan Reynolds portrayed a version of that character in ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’.  Unfortunately, neither that movie, nor the Deadpool presented therein, were well-received.  Kinberg would love to see “The Merc With A Mouth” brought back to life… in an R-Rated movie.  It wouldn’t be a first for a Marvel adaptation.  The ‘Blade’ movies were all rated R and many movies based on indie comics are also rated R.  But with superhero movies resounding with a young audience in a way comic adaptations haven’t in decades, is it wise to cut out that lucrative portion of movie-goers?

“Yeah, it makes sense to me.  Genuinely it’s early phases, early days, but if you’re gonna do a ‘Deadpool’ movie, I think you’ve gotta do a hard-R, darker movie and he is the perfect character to do it with.”

While ‘Deadpool’ may be a ways off, Fox has already announced that ‘X-Men’, ‘X2: X-Men United’ and ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past‘ director Bryan Singer will be returning in ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’ and that they are developing an ‘X-Force’ movie. The studio is even considering a spin-off for a few X-characters, namely Mystique, played by Jennifer Lawrence who is now an Academy Award winner and franchise headliner from ‘The Hunger Games’ series.

So like Sony, Fox is delving deeper into the catalog of characters that it already owns the rights to. What do you think?  What X-Men properties deserve their own movies?

Source: Collider