Deadpool may have far exceeded expectations at the box office earlier this year, but X-Men: Apocalypse crashed and burned. Far from a flop, the divisive follow-up to X-Men: Days of Future Past still wasn’t the $1 billion hit 20th Century Fox were hoping for, and between that and the failed Fantastic Four reboot in 2015, the studio has a lot of work to do on their Marvel properties.
While there’s no word on what’s next for that foursome, producer and writer Simon Kinberg has revealed in a new interview that with Wolverine: Weapon X currently shooting, they’ll have Deadpool 2 in production early next year, with work starting on whatever comes next for the X-Men shortly after.
“The first thing up, we’re shooting the Wolverine movie right now and we start shooting Deadpool 2 at the beginning of next year, then I sit down and start writing the next of the mainline X-Men movies.”
Chances are then that Deadpool 2 will be released in 2018, with the next X-Men movie probably following in 2019 (that release date would give the franchise a breather and may leave room for Bryan Singer to return once he’s finished with 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea). As for Gambit – which was supposed to be released this October – Kinberg added:
“We have a great script on that and hope to shoot that movie at the beginning of spring of next year.”
That one is a little harder to believe. Director Doug Liman has lined up two other projects in recent months, while Channing Tatum has a ton of other movies on his plate in the near future. With so many behind the scenes issues, it feels like this one might never happen, but if it eventually comes to fruition, we’d certainly be happy.
We’ll have to wait and see how that all plays out, but hey, at least things are looking good for Deadpool!
