After the disappointing critical and commercial performance of the last film in the X-Men franchise, Apocalypse, 20th Century Fox went silent in regards to how they were going to proceed. The various spinoffs in development – Deadpool 2, New Mutants and Gambit (?) – are still chugging along, but we’ve heard nothing yet on what’s happening next for the main series. At least, that was the case up until a few days ago.
Earlier this week, a production listing was spotted for two X-Men films that will shoot in Montreal this spring. The first is the aforementioned New Mutants and the second is for a mysterious project titled X-Men: Supernova. Immediately, fans jumped to the conclusion that this must be the sequel to Apocalypse and now, it looks like they may be right.
Fox hasn’t commented on the situation just yet, but we’ve heard in the past that they’re hoping to soft reboot the series in order to get it back on track, and they’ll be looking to the classic storyline of The Dark Phoenix Saga to do so. While the title X-Men: Supernova on its own doesn’t indicate very much at all, we now have another piece of the puzzle that seemingly ties everything together.
Production Weekly has updated their listing for the film and now have its working title as “Dark Phoenix.” Again, nothing official from the studio has popped up yet, but the pieces are starting to fall into place and it really does look like X-Men: Supernova is going to be the next entry in the main series and will, as previously rumored, adapt the classic storyline.
For those unfamiliar, Dark Phoenix is referencing The Dark Phoenix Saga, which is a popular arc from the comics that revolves around Jean Grey and the cosmic entity known as the Phoenix Force. Of course, we saw elements of this in X-Men: The Last Stand, but it was never really brought to life properly and for years now fans have been calling for the storyline to be given another chance.
Though Fox has yet to comment, all signs point to this being the route they’ll take for the next X-Men film, and if that’s the case, we certainly won’t be complaining. The series needs a shot in the arm right now and taking a beloved storyline like this and using it to do a soft reboot of sorts could be just the thing to get the mutants back in fans’ good graces again. Not that Apocalypse was a terrible film, mind you, but it was certainly underwhelming.
With everything beginning to leak out now, we imagine the studio will release an official statement shortly. Until they do, however, let us know what you think of X-Men: Supernova and Fox’s plans to adapt The Dark Phoenix Saga in the comments section down below.
