Empire recently caught up with prolific comic book-movie producer Lauren Shuler Donner ("X-Men
", "X-Men Origins : Wolverine") at a press do for the just-released 'Wolverine' DVD & Blu-Ray, and managed to get the eternally-busy Donner to answer some questions on some of the oft-discussed future 'X-Men' flicks.
Wolverine 2 "That's the furthest along of all the X-Men projects on the boil. It's actually the story we wanted to use for the first Wolverine film, but [Fox head honcho] Tom Rothman preferred to set the character up with an origin story first. This movie will really focus on the relationship between Wolverine and Mariko, the daughter of a Japanese crime lord, and what happens to him in Japan. We're very fortunate to have a story mostly outlined for us [from the comic book arc co-written by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller]. And we wanted an A+ writer, so we want to Chris McQuarrie (Valkyrie, The Usual Suspects
).''
X-Men : The First Class Donner says it'll be in the vein of some of the 'darker' "Harry Potter" flicks, but it definitely won't be a kids film. "The First Class comics are really fun - they're funnier than any other comics I've read. Basically in each one the kids are fighting strange villains, sometimes it's aliens, sometimes it's monsters. I want to get a flavour of that world. Occasionally the kids will be in class, but more often they'll be off on adventures. Which Professor X isn't too happy about! There's nothing more interesting than a bad kid, and this is full of naughty children. Cyclops, for example - he's a tough kid that bobbed from foster home to foster home, until he ends up at the school and becomes the leader. There's also still an element of friction between the mutants and the outside world. Remember that this will be set way back before anyone knew mutants existed. Right now the script is not done''.
Deadpool Donner says that although Ryan Reynolds will again be playing the character, they'll be ignoring what they did with the character in 'Wolverine
'. "I want to ignore the version of Deadpool that we saw in Wolverine and just start over again. Reboot it. Because this guy talks, obviously, and to muzzle him would be insane. I don't see it as a problem that Ryan [Reynolds] is also playing Green Lantern. I mean, look at Harrison Ford - he was in Stars Wars and Indiana Jones at the same time and everyone was fine with that. Green Lantern could not be more different to Wade Wilson....There are good stories and we're figuring out which ones to incorporate....We're right in the thick of talking to writers right now, and hopefully by November we'll have decided who's going to do it''.
Magneto ''David Goyer has written a brilliant script. It starts in the concentration camps and has Magneto coming out of there. But you know, I'm not sure that film is going to be made. The studio has a wealth of potential stories, and they have to stand back and decide which ones to make. And Magneto, I think, is at the back of the queue. Maybe it'll get made in five years - who knows? I can tell you that Ian McKellen won't be playing the character the whole way through''.
For more on what Donner had to say about the above projects head over to
Empire.
