Following the success of this summer's X-Men: Days of Future Past, Fox is moving full-speed ahead on its X-Men franchise with both X-Men: Apocalypse and the newly-scheduled Ryan Reynolds spinoff Deadpool on tap for 2016.
Executive producer of the franchise, and Days of Future Past writer, Simon Kinberg points to Marvel Studios as inspiration.
"There's definitely a sort of overall plan that we've all been talking about for the X-Men universe now, andDeadpool obviously fits into that," Kinberg told ComicBook.com.
"I guess I would say it's part of certainly an overall timeline and thought process that goes into these films, some of which is inspired by the comics and some which is inspired by seeing what Marvel's done with telling a larger tapestry and linking all those movies together, even as they stand independently as well. The same kind of thought is going to go into these X-Men movies at Fox."
The reference to the comic books may be telling: while an X-Men spinoff, the Deadpool comic book series has in recent years stood apart from the main X-Men titles even as the character has appeared in titles such as Uncanny X-Force.
Kinberg also characterized Fox's approach to the original material as "try[ing] to honor our favorite books," but not being slavishly devoted to them.
"I feel like that's what we did with Days of Future Past, to some extent," he explained.
"Obviously, people knew the main story, but they sort of slowly learned some of the bigger decisions we were making as we were going... It was also organic to our process, the collaborative process with me, and [director] Bryan Singer, and [Executive Producer] Lauren Shuler Donner, and the actors. It evolves. It evolves as it goes, which you want, because any good idea or new idea, we're game for and we're open to."
X-Men: Apocalypse will be released May 27, 2016, following Deadpool's Feb 12 release that year.
