06-02-2006, 02:24 PM
From USAToday
After a boffo box office debut for X-Men: The Last Stand, the franchise opts for a divide-and-conquer strategy. Plus, we've got buzz on the Akeelah and the Bee DVD and Tony Bennett's birthday plans.
Movies: 'X-Men' franchise mutates into a pack of solo films
The X-Men mutants plan to divide and conquer.
After last weekend's four-day, $122.9 million debut of X-Men: The Last Stand, the third film in the Marvel Comics series, producers are devising ways to launch some characters into their own franchises.
The first spinoff will be Hugh Jackman's Wolverine. His character has an as-yet-unrevealed back story in which researchers replaced his original bones with a metal skeleton. Jackman has signed on to star and co-produce, and X-Men producer Lauren Shuler Donner says it will likely head into production next year.
"We've also talked about doing something on the kids in (Professor X's) school, focusing on their lives, and less of a global adventure for the team," says Hutch Parker, production president of 20th Century Fox.
The studio is also exploring a movie with Three Kings director David O. Russell based on the character of Emma Frost, a sexy mutant telepath who can transform her skin into diamonds. She is an X-Men comics regular but was not featured in the movies.
Another likely solo project: Magneto, also in the script phase. The film will focus on his youthful pre-villain days, Shuler Donner says.
Though it would require a younger actor for those sequences, she says the film would need Ian McKellen to anchor the flashbacks. "What's a Magneto movie without Ian?" she asks.
After a boffo box office debut for X-Men: The Last Stand, the franchise opts for a divide-and-conquer strategy. Plus, we've got buzz on the Akeelah and the Bee DVD and Tony Bennett's birthday plans.
Movies: 'X-Men' franchise mutates into a pack of solo films
The X-Men mutants plan to divide and conquer.
After last weekend's four-day, $122.9 million debut of X-Men: The Last Stand, the third film in the Marvel Comics series, producers are devising ways to launch some characters into their own franchises.
The first spinoff will be Hugh Jackman's Wolverine. His character has an as-yet-unrevealed back story in which researchers replaced his original bones with a metal skeleton. Jackman has signed on to star and co-produce, and X-Men producer Lauren Shuler Donner says it will likely head into production next year.
"We've also talked about doing something on the kids in (Professor X's) school, focusing on their lives, and less of a global adventure for the team," says Hutch Parker, production president of 20th Century Fox.
The studio is also exploring a movie with Three Kings director David O. Russell based on the character of Emma Frost, a sexy mutant telepath who can transform her skin into diamonds. She is an X-Men comics regular but was not featured in the movies.
Another likely solo project: Magneto, also in the script phase. The film will focus on his youthful pre-villain days, Shuler Donner says.
Though it would require a younger actor for those sequences, she says the film would need Ian McKellen to anchor the flashbacks. "What's a Magneto movie without Ian?" she asks.
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