What could Fox's 2 mystery superhero films be

Well it wasn’t a boring February, that’s for sure.  Between the racial kerfuffle of Gods of Egypt, the critical explosion of The Witch, and the smash hit that was Deadpool February has finally achieved its longtime goal of being a month worth discussing.  And with this unexpected boom of importance comes a shift in priorities, most specifically the priorities of Fox.  

In the wake of February Fox has apparently scuttled this fall’s proposed Gambit movie and announced 2 unnamed new superhero films for 2017 and 2018.  Given that the only thing we know about these movies is that they’re superhero films and I run a column exclusively dedicated to wild speculation on upcoming comic book and superhero fair these are my predictions for what Fox’s 2 mystery movies could be.

DEADPOOL 2

This is the safest conceivable bet for these flicks, most probably the 2018 slot.  Hugh Jackman’s desire to depart from the X-Men franchise has only calcified in recent years, to the point that he’s not even featured anywhere in the marketing for X-Men: Apocalypse.  Without Wolverine as series mascot Fox is in desperate need of a new face of the franchise and Deadpool is the cheapest and safest way to do that.  He just had a smash hit movie on his own and can exist without all the costly special FX of most X-Men films.  What’s more, Deadpool’s full body suit makes him much easier to CG and his facemask means less work for Ryan Reynolds and no royalty checks for likeness rights.

We already know a Deadpool sequel is in the works and dropping it in the early winter of 2018 would be a smart way for Fox to hedge their bets once more like they did with this first installment.  I’m not exactly sure what new story there is to be told with Deadpool for this installment but given that Cable and Domino are already confirmed for the film it seems like Fox is leaning hard on the more team-centric elements of his story.  Maybe he’ll be part of the mercenary team Six Pack or the like.  Speaking of teams however…

X-FORCE

This one has reportedly been in development for a while now so it feels more than a little overdue.  X-Force was originally conceived as something of a reworking of the X-Men into a more violent and mercenary unit with a serious bend towards elements of the DC team the Teen Titans.  I’m not sure we’ll see the original line-up given that, in that incarnation, the team were essentially a mercenary force for Cable and he’s already slotted to be in Deadpool.  Conversely, I could believe Fox wanting to build its Deadpool brand into a full on film series with an X-Force movie as the next logical step in that progression.  The original vision of the team involved a lot of mutants with fairly easy to visualize powers as well so it’s not like it’d be too expensive to render this group.

Conversely, this could be a vision of X-Force more in line with their recent version as a black ops team for Cyclops.  Though the roster wasn’t that different, this X-Force aesthetically already fits the X-Men films (black and grey outfits as far as the eye can see,) and it’d be a nice excuse for Fox to squeeze Wolverine into the series.  If Jackman really is closing the book on Wolverine in 2017 they could debut a new actor in the role in an X-Force movie as a way to compel people to give it a chance.  Also, the more modern team featured X-23, a female Wolverine clone, as a predominate member and that’d be a pretty cool way to fill the claw shaped hole in the X-Men franchise.

NEW MUTANTS

Another member of the development hell club and the main reason I tend to think the X-Force film will lean more towards the modern vision of the team than the classic ‘90s interpretation.  The New Mutants were a team of younger students at the Xavier institute who were sort of meant to be X-Men in training.  They tended toward uniforms over costumes and had a pretty diminished set of powers compared to the main team.  Some powers are pretty out there like turning into flame or becoming a human cannonball but for the most part they had abilities like illusions, mind control, and translating languages. 

There’s not a ton of evidence suggesting Fox is ready to dust off the New Mutants brand, especially as none of the team members have ever proved all that interesting or compelling in their own right.  The biggest reason I could see these guys finally getting their day in the sun is that Cable ran the New Mutants for quite a time.  As mentioned, the future of the X-Men films is going to be defined by searching for franchise mascots to replace Wolverine and Cable could conceivably fill that role.  Sure his powers are ridiculous and his origin convoluted but just throwing him on screen with a big metal arm and all kinds of guns and you’d be well on your way to winning audiences over. 

GAMBIT

The fact that Gambit is “on hold” instead of outright canceled means Fox is probably holding their breath to see if they need to spend as much money on it as they thought they would back before Deadpool was a smash hit.  The reality here is that Gambit has, almost overnight, become a risky move for Fox and given their general apathy toward pushing the superhero envelope it’s not surprising they’d rather play the wait and see game.  It certainly doesn’t help that Channing Tatum’s had a lot of trouble securing box office success with his non-comedy entries.  I mean, for every 21 Jump Street or Magic Mike XXL there’s a G.I Joe or Jupiter Ascending waiting in the wings. 

It’s possible Fox will try and work Tatum’s Gambit in as part of some larger team feature but if they can manage to sell audiences on Deadpool to the same level they did Wolverine back in the early 2000s I doubt we’ll be seeing Gambit any time soon.  What’s more, the whole point of the X-Men soft reboot with Days of Future Past was letting Fox pick-up cheaper actors for their big, marketable/important heroes so slotting an expensive star like Tatum into that slot would probably go against their grain.  Still, it’s a long way till 2018 and if audiences suddenly sour on most of the X-franchise a Gambit movie would be a strong power move to break out to curtail flagging sales. 

STORM

This is one of those movie ideas that’s so “slap in the face” obvious it’s kind of shocking it hasn’t already been tried.  Honestly, I think the main reason we’ve yet to get a Storm film is because for the longest time Halle Berry was our Storm and even putting aside how abysmal she was in the part, that Catwoman movie pretty much sunk her chances at another solo superhero feature.  However, X-Men: Apocalypse is set to introduce Alexandra Shipp as the new Storm so I’ve got renewed hope for a possible solo film for comics’ premiere woman of color.

Incidentally, the fact that Storm is a black woman has probably been another big, uncomfortable part of why she’s yet to receive the solo movie treatment despite being one of the coolest and most interesting X-Men.  However, I’d like to think the growing demand for diversity as well as upcoming superhero films like Black Panther and Wonder Woman might break open the path for a Storm solo flick.  At the very least, Shipp looks like she’s set to crush the part in Apocalypse so giving her a solo film to explore the character in greater detail would be a major good move.  What’s more, the 2017 movie will be going head to head with Thor: Ragnarok so getting the Goddess of Thunder into theaters would be a nice scoop. 

STAR JAMMERS

This guess comes from a number of bizarre factors.  Partially, there’s the unaccountable fact that Fox has been keeping Lucas Till’s Havok around since First Class for no discernable reason.  Havok has never been that beloved of a character but he was noteworthy for eventually joining Marvel’s once premiere group of space rogues; the Star Jammers.  Led by Corsair, the father of Cyclops and Havok, the Star Jammers were a scrappy band of alien rogues and rebels tooling around the galaxy and dodging the machinations of big galactic empires and cosmically powerful beings.  In case that pitch doesn’t sound familiar: they were basically the Guardians of the Galaxy before there were Guardians of the Galaxy.

So far, Guardians has managed to burrow into the popular consciousness in a shockingly impactful way.  Sure, the first film made a ton of money, but the characters, quotes, and concepts of the film have become an engrained aspect of our lives in a major way.  Even the basic conception of the trailer has become standard now, to the point that even Star Trek is trying to mimic its success.  Dropping a Star Jammers flick to try and pick-up on that popularity would be a smart move, especially if Fox really is planning to do the Dark Phoenix saga for that X-Men movie slotted for 2018. 

FANTASTIC FOUR

I think I can say with major certainty that Fantastic Four won’t be one of these movies; but it’s fun to pretend.  Look let’s be realistic here, at this point Fantastic Four is a loss making property and the only reason Fox would churn out any more films from this franchise is to prolong their pissing contest with Marvel over pointless and bitter IP rights.  That being said, spite can be a great motivator and it’s obvious Fox really doesn’t want to give Marvel the rights to any of their properties back.  What’s more, there’s that whole “Guardians of the Galaxy is huge so everyone needs THEIR Guardians movie” thing I just mentioned with the Star Jammers.  The Fantastic Four actually does have a lot of elements that could work as Guardians of the Galaxy stand-ins and routinely tool around space on random adventures so finding that parallel wouldn't be too difficult.

The main reason this won’t happen is just that Fox doesn’t really need to face the tidal wave of backlash that resurrecting Fantastic Four just 3 years later would generate.  Bad movies tend to stick in the popular consciousness a lot more now and bad superhero films especially so trying to sell audiences on Fantastic Four so soon after the 2015 failure would be a Herculean task.  What’s more, it’d be way easier for Fox to just up-jump some other space franchise and do it GotG style like Last Starfighter. 

SILVER SURFER

Speaking of a space franchise that could be resurrected with less baggage, look no further than the Silver Surfer.  It’s easy to forget but there was actually a big hullabaloo awhile back over the rights to Silver Surfer and Galactus.  The thing was that Marvel wanted the rights to those characters back and were willing to trade Fox an extension on the Daredevil rights in exchange.  Obviously that deal fell through and Fox felt superior for resisting Marvel’s temptations.  However, now that Marvel’s turned Daredevil into a pretty kick-ass Netflix show it’s looking a lot like Fox got the bum end of the deal on this bad boy.  That’s not a position any producer wants to be in and given that space opera weirdness is IN now, throwing together a Silver Surfer movie to prove that holding onto the rights wasn’t a mistake seems all to plausible. 

The only thing standing in the way of this pitch is money.  As mentioned Fox really doesn't like shelling out a lot of cash on superhero films and a Silver Surfer movie would require quite the windfall.  Still, assuming Fox has maintained some of the more interesting space based characters of the X-Men and Fantastic Four franchises such as the Brood, the Shiar, the Phalanx and such, you could create a pretty compelling Silver Surfer movie.

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