20th Century Fox is moving forward with its long-awaited X-Force film, and X-Men: Apocalypse director Bryan Singer says he would like a female Wolverine to star.
Singer confirmed that he’s discussed with the studio what will happen with Wolverine after Hugh Jackman retires and suggested featuring Logan’s female clone X-23 in Fox’s X-Force film. “I actually initially pitched the X-Force and the female,” Singer told Fandango in a recent interview.
X-23 was originally introduced in the animated series X-Men: Evolution and later featured in the comics in 2004. She’s a clone created by the Weapon X program in an attempt to replicate the success they had with Wolverine. As the number implies, she was the 23 attempt.
Like Wolverine, X-23 has superhuman strength, reflexes, agility, and a healing factor. Unlike Wolverine, she only has two claws on her hands. In the comics, X-23 recently took on the mantle of Wolverine following the hero’s death.
Singer, while currently only involved at the idea level, confirmed that X-Force “is in the earliest script stage”, adding, “we’ll see how it evolves.”
Singer will focus next on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, set around 1865, following the aftermath of the Civil War. The film is based on the 1870 Jules Verne novel by the same name and is expected to feature original characters, like Captain Nemo, Ned Land and Professor Aronnax.
The Apocalypse director also revealed that he “absolutely” sees a future in which the X-Men, X-Force, Deadpool and New Mutants can all star together in what would be Fox’s darker Avengers-like “event” picture.
“But it has to be done right,” he added. “Anytime you throw all these characters together to hit a start date, it can make a lot of money, but it can also be a clusterf**k. To me, it has to be done with a lot of care. These things can get overwhelming, and if a character doesn’t belong in a movie, don’t use him. If the tone can still maintain itself, I’m all for it. What I’m not for is throwing a bunch of characters together and hoping it works.”
