Logan is currently the talk of the town – and rightfully so, with critics and fans alike lapping up Wolverine’s final chapter in their droves. It’s currently perched at the tip-top of the domestic box office with $85.3 million ($237 million total, including international markets), and will no doubt take some budging over the coming weeks as word of mouth begins to spread.
All in all, it looks as though everything is going according to plan; after investing in James Mangold and Hugh Jackman’s R-rated vision – a vision that forced the latter to take a pay cut early on in development, which he humbly accepted – 20th Century Fox is in the process of collecting a healthy box office return, while ardent X-Men fans finally got the standalone Wolverine movie they’ve been frothing for since the turn of the millennium.
Such a success story has even spawned talk of additional R-rated superhero movies in the not-so-distant future (X-Force?), and if nothing else, Logan is concrete proof that the Merc With a Mouth isn’t the only one who can shoulder a risky R-rating and walk away with a healthy box office sum in tow.
Speaking of future films, one point of contention that was raised soon after Fox hosted press screenings for Logan was the possibility of an X-23 spinoff focusing on Dafne Keen’s fierce and indeed fearless mutant, Laura. It’s an area that James Mangold is keen to explore, and the writer-director is confident Keen’s fan-favorite character has a big future on the big screen, regardless of whether that future takes the form of an ensemble movie, or an intimate, character-driven solo movie in the style of Logan. Turns out Dafne Keen is open to the possibility of reprising the role, too, as she revealed as much when she appeared alongside James Mangold for a recent interview with Den of Geek.
When presented with the prospect of a standalone X-23 movie, here’s what the pair had to say:
“Yeah, I’m wide open to that,” Mangold says on the subject of an X-23 movie. “I think we could have a great time. The first thing is, always, you need a script, you must have a good script.” He then adds while turning to Dafne, “You game for it, you open?”
She smiles with an affirmative nod, “Yeah.”
Logan clawed its way into theaters on March 3rd with a Deadpool 2 promo video to boot, and you can watch that all-too-brief teaser through the link – Stan Lee included.
