Before Disney ended up purchasing Fox and acquiring all of their most marketable assets, it appeared as though X-Force would add a new dimension onto the long-running X-Men franchise. Having spent years stuck in development hell, The Cabin in the Woods‘ Drew Goddard was attached to write and direct a spinoff that would place the focus on Josh Brolin’s instant fan favorite Cable.
Of course, X-Force had already been introduced into the big screen mythology at that point, although the team’s involvement in Deadpool 2 was played entirely for laughs. Given the amount of recognizable talent that had been assembled for the lineup, it was very much in keeping with the irreverent nature of the Merc with a Mouth that they were all killed off in the space of a single scene.
Terry Crews’ Bedlam, Bill Skarsgard’s Zeitgeist, Lewis Tan’s Shatterstar, Rob Delaney’s Peter and, of course, Brad Pitt’s Vanisher would have been more than capable of leading the X-Force movie alongside Cable, Deadpool and Domino, but instead they all met a grisly end before they could even start their first mission.
Deadpool 3 might be in development at Marvel Studios with an X-Men reboot also happening eventually, but it seems unlikely that Kevin Feige and his team have any plans for the rest of the X-Force characters. Which is a real shame, because Lewis Tan just admitted in a recent interview that he has an idea for a Shatterstar spinoff, and it sounds awesome.
“When I signed on it was fairly hidden from me what was going to happen. Once I found out I was still excited. working with Ryan Reynolds and David Leitch was such a good experience, and I love the characters of both Deadpool and Shatterstar. Of course, now I fell in love with playing him and would love to do a spinoff where we can explore Mojoworld in a Mad Max-meets-Gladiator type of way, that would be a dream.”
Tan is an accomplished martial artist whose star has continued to rise since Deadpool 2, and the idea of seeing him lead a superhero movie set on one of the most bizarre planets in the pages of Marvel Comics that draws inspiration from Mad Max and Gladiator would certainly be something to behold. In fact, now that we’ve heard it out loud, it seems a real shame that the chances of it actually happening are pretty much non-existent.