Despite the so-so reviews for X-Men: Apocalypse and the fact that Jennifer Lawrence has now completed her run as Mystique, Fox is still pushing ahead with X-Men for the foreseeable future.
It's been confirmed today that the next X-Men movie in the franchise will be X-Men: Dark Phoenix, and take in the comic-book storyline of the same name. The basic gist of that story was Jean Grey - played in X-Men: Apocalypse by Game of Thrones actress Sophie Turner, and previously by Famke Janssen - gets exposed to solar radiation and effectively pushes her mutant powers to their ultimate limit, which in turn drives her insane.
Does that sound familiar to you? That's because X-Men: The Last Stand more or less covered the same ground, albeit badly. However, with the jumbled-up continuity of the more recent X-Men movies, it's obviously given them a chance to go back and do it right this time.
This also means that Sophie Turner is now going to be a much more central part of the story, filling the void of a female lead from Jennifer Lawrence's departure from the franchise. So far, no director has been announced, although the word is that Simon Kinberg will be making his directorial debut on this film.
More interesting is the release date of November 2nd, 2018 - which puts it in direct competition with Disney's live-action adaptation of Mulan. Fox is betting that they can take on Disney's Mulan and win, otherwise they wouldn't have scheduled it for the same release date.
What do you make of it? Are you still excited about the X-Men franchise? Let us know in the comments!
