In an interview with Collider, Fox Mega Producer Simon Kinberg spoke on the two major upcoming superhero films from that studio: Apocalypse and Deadpool. One movie involves a twisted mutant releasing his wrath on the world, and one involves Apocalypse! Baaa-dum-dump. Sorry about that. Either way, it looks like Kinberg had plenty to say on both movies!
At the start of the interview, Kinberg stated that they had hit an unforeseen snag during the editing process of Apocalypse. “I’m super happy with it. We are in the edit working on it, working on the first cut of the film. But it’s really exciting. I’ve said this before and I feel it even more having seen the movie cut together: I do think it will be the biggest of the X-Men films just in terms of the scale and the scope of the movie, and even more the emotional stakes and scope of the film. It has a level of drama and emotion, for all of the characters—I think going into it I assumed this would be the culmination in many ways of this little trilogy we were telling for young Erik, Charles, Mystique, and Beast but I think what was surprising over the span of photography and now into post as well is just how resonant the young Jean, Scott, and Storm stories are too. So I think the movie feels very balanced between—I don’t wanna call them the older generation because they were the younger generation, but the generation of the X-Men from the last few films and the new generation.”
What about Quicksilver and Magneto? Will we get a chance to see ‘that’ happen? “It’s something that we allude to very vaguely in Days of Future Past when he says, ‘My mom knew a guy who could control metal’ and [Michael] Fassbender gives him that look, all of which is meant to indicate that it’s his father. It’s a part of the film and I think it’s a really emotional, really important part of the movie.”
Pretty sweet, right? We also saw some rather…unconventional turns during the last X-Men movie and mega-hit star Jennifer Lawrence was portrayed as halfway between Professor X and Magneto. In this movie, the focus will be on Mystique. Kinberg elaborated, “I think the movie explores her struggle, which is sort of the result of Days of Future Past. If you think about the end of Days of Future Past, in front of the entire world she stops Magneto and saves the President and cabinet, and so this movie certainly explores 10 years later what it is to wear the mantle of that responsibility.”
Changing pace, Kinberg finally answered the question on whether or not the X-Men films will share the same universe as Deadpool. “It takes place within the X-Men universe and references that universe. It’s not the same time period as our past tense X-Men movies, like First Class, Days of Future Past, and Apocalypse take place in the past and Deadpool takes place in the present, but it acknowledges everything that’s happened in those other movies and the universe, and like you said Colossus is in it and other characters from the X-Men world.”
Will we ever get a chance to see an X-Men movie with Deadpool? Perhaps…they certainly set the groundwork for it with the previous quote. As to the overwhelming response Deadpool has generated thus far, Kinberg was asked on whether or not they had started to work on a sequel. “It’s certainly the hope, and there is conversation about what the idea would be and perhaps which characters we would bring in to a sequel. The writers, Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, were a really integral part of the process. Our focus, like all of us, is on finishing the film, so I think as soon as we finish the film we’ll be talking seriously about the sequel and then we’ll wait a couple months and see how the movie does. Hopefully the movie will do great and we can keep making these movies, because I do think there’s a lot more story to tell. I’m assuming it’ll come out somewhere whether it’s on the internet or the DVD eventually, but on every single take there’s like an embarrassment of riches of alternate takes, whether it’s Ryan or T.J. Miller, pretty much any character in the movie just goofing around and coming up with other lines, ideas, abs. It’d be fun to keep making these movies because it doesn’t feel like we’ll run out of juice.”
Kinberg then joked on how absolutely perfect Ryan Reynolds was for Deadpool. “I’ve worked on a lot of movies, comic book any otherwise, and I don’t know that I’ve ever seen an actor as perfectly suited to a part as Ryan is to Deadpool. It’s just something that comes so naturally to him. It’s one of the reasons why he creates so many of those viral pieces, because I think he has so much fun being Deadpool that he’s Deadpool on and off set.” That really doesn’t surprise me all that much…what about you?
Sounds pretty sweet eh? From all reports, everything on the Deadpool set was an absolute blast. People were having fun with the production, things were often improvised, and people continue to produce commercials and trailers way beyond the point shooting was wrapped. Kinberg reflected, “The radical-ness of the movie, the fun of the movie, the sort of mischief of the movie—that would be the best word is ‘mischief’—is something that translates to the way the movie was made too. There was so much freedom to making the movie, I think because the studio understood that it has to be a radical film, a hard-R, and it has to satisfy the core fans, it just was allowed to be in all the best ways a weirder film than pretty much any other movie a studio is gonna release.” I don’t know about you, but both movies sound absolutely fantastic and Simon Kinberg is doing a great job at promoting both!
