The next X-Men movie will bring the supervillain Apocalypse to cinemas in 2016.
Director Bryan Singer, who oversaw the first two films in the long-running superhero series and is the director of X-Men: Days of Future Past, out next May, tweeted the news yesterday, posting: "#Xmen #Apocalypse 2016!"
Apocalypse's comic-book back story should dovetail nicely with the time-travel themes currently being explored in the series. Posited as the first mutant human, born more than 5,000 years ago, his history is filled with alternative timelines that resurrected dead characters and transformed the X-Men universe. In the most famous instalment, 1995's Age of Apocalypse, the immortal villain emerges as the new ruler of an Earth where mutants have enslaved their human counterparts.
#Xmen #Apocalypse 2016!
— Bryan Singer (@BryanSinger) December 5, 2013
In the forthcoming X-Men: Days of Future Past, Singer will unite the original cast of the first three X-Men films with their younger counterparts from 2011's X-Men: First Class, which took place in the 1960s when warring mutants Magneto and Professor X were young men. It sees Hugh Jackman's Wolverine travelling back in time to warn James McAvoy's Charles Xavier of a future disaster that will threaten all X-Men.
20th Century Fox is working hard to capitalise on its ownership of rights to the Marvel series and is developing a spin-off film centred on mutant combo X-Force. The studio revealed this week that it has signed Days of Future Past writer Simon Kinberg to work on expanding the universe in line with the recent pioneering work of Disney-owned Marvel studios. The latter successfully developed Iron Man, Thor and Captain America films, before bringing the trio together with the Hulk for the $1.5bn (£.9bn) box-office hit The Avengers, in 2011. 20th Century Fox has a reboot of its other Marvel comics property, Fantastic Four, in the works, and could seek to cross-pollinate those characters with their X-Men counterparts.
"I have a lot of ideas on how to built those brands and do what everybody is thinking of these days: Be like Marvel," Kinberg told the Hollywood Reporter. "I want to be able to build stories over multiple movies."
The writer-producer's body of work includes the Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie action film Mr and Mrs Smith, along with Neill Blomkamp's Elysium and the South African film-maker's planned follow-up, Chappie. Kinberg is also set to write the screenplay for one of the forthcoming Star Wars films.
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