Playing outside of the X-Men box has been working well for Fox as shown by both ‘Logan’ and ‘Deadpool’ and now the studio has signed James Franco on board as Jamie Madrox who is better known as ‘Multiple Man’ for a standalone movie. The film is being penned by Allan Heinberg who is probably best known for his amazing work on ‘Wonder Woman’ and Simon Kinberg will, of course, be on hand to produce.
While the mutant hero was at one point one of the X-Men, he is probably best known for joining the government sanctioned superhero team known as X-Factor before it disbanded and he opened up a mutant investigation agency under the same name. With the ‘New Mutants‘ possibly being held in a government facility themselves there could be some easy ties into the larger world depending how it all plays out. Another easy way to link him in was that when introduced in the comics, he was a patient on Moira Mactaggert’s Muir Island research facility which could easily show up as well.
Multiple Man has the ability to clone himself by absorbing kinetic impact. He can, by straining himself, do so up to 100 times. From relationships with other mutants to having a leadership role to having some of his clones rebel – there are a lot of interesting ways to take the character. The clones actually all have both thoughts and lives of their own and while most of the time they have no problems merging back into the original body, we’ve seen some of these duplicates try to replace Madrox in the past or even believe that they were the real one for extended periods of time.
Also, when the clones are absorbed back into his body he experiences what they did which has given him both mental and emotional trauma from those who have suffered grave injuries or, in some instances, were knocking at death’s door.
Sounds like the perfect complex comic book character for Franco to play! While he may end up wearing green in the role, at least he won’t be riding around on a glider in the movie. Honestly, if ‘Legion’ hadn’t already made it to the small screen I would have loved to see him tackle a cinematic version of the character.
Source: Deadline