X-Men: First Class Sequel: Producer Offers Brief Update
Posted 07.15.12 by Ryan
Twentieth Century Fox didn't have a panel at this year's Comic-Con, but Simon Kinberg, who wrote the ill-fated 2006 sequel X-Men: The Last Stand and produced last year's X-Men: First Class, was on hand to discuss Fox's X-Men franchise. While ostensibly there to help promote Sony's upcoming sci-fi movie Elysium, Kinberg also spoke to ComingSoon about the X-Men: First Class sequel, which Kinberg is writing for First Class director Matthew Vaughn, whose return for the sequel was in question until he was confirmed to return in January. During the interview, Kinberg discussed his relationship with Vaughn and the X-Men franchise.
I was involved with X-Men: The Last Stand and I was the producer of X-Men: First Class, so I was with (Matthew) for both since he was going to direct X3 and Matthew and I and Zak Penn really wrote that together. Matthew was in the room with us breaking the story and then he went away off X3 for various reasons and when X-Men: First Class came back around, which I developed with Lauren Schuler-Donner and Bryan Singer as producers. Right around the time Kick-Ass came out, we were looking for a director and we all saw Kick-Ass and we all were like, "You know, we wanted him before, he's a fantastically-skilled director…" I mean, I thought Kick-Ass was astounding, another sort of groundbreaking movie, and we ended up back in the X-Men world with him. I thought he did such a great job with First Class that it gave us all license to do some really ambitious things with the sequel.
As for what might happen in the First Class sequel, Kinberg could not reveal much, but he did offer a few hints that imply that most of the characters from the first movie will be returning and that the period setting will be retained.
I'm not allowed to even breathe a word of any sort of details but I can say that the things that we thought worked well in First Class were the characters, especially the four or five lead characters. The Charles-Erik relationship was obviously incredibly resonant and James [McAvoy] and Michael [Fassbender] did such an amazing job as those characters. Jen Lawrence and Nick Hoult, that's a really interesting relationship between Raven and Hank, so we're really going to be focusing on character and personally I really liked the period aspect of First Class so we may well do that.
Kinberg was also asked about the prequel aspect of the First Class movies, and if they will work harder to link to the original trilogy.
It's an interesting thing and I wouldn't know how to define it because we tried to be as respectful as possible in First Class to the "Singer-verse," to X1-3 really, and there are places where we diverged from that and broke that, but there were other places where we were really respectful to, like even little silly things like the Rebecca Romijn cameo, so we are constructing it with X1-3 in mind. There may be some places where we don't line up perfectly but it is something we are very aware of and want to be respectful of and the people who are responsible for those movies — Lauren Schuler-Donner, Bryan Singer and Fox — are all involved.