USA Today has an article about the possible upcoming X-Men spin-off films, including the Wolverine and Magneto movies Fox has been talking about for about ever. There were two other concepts that really caught my eye, though, and the most interesting was David O. Russell working on an Emma Frost movie.
David O. Russell is, of course, one of the best directors working today. He’s had a run of success that you rarely see – Spanking the Monkey: brilliant; Flirting With Disaster: very good; Three Kings: brilliant; I <3 Huckabees: brilliant – and the idea of him doing something as mainstream as a superhero movie is damn intriguing. And the Emma Frost character, who wasn’t in the X Films, is pretty intriguing on her own. In her time she’s been everything from a villain who trained a group of bad kid mutants called The Hellions, a teacher at the Xavier School, the lover to Cyclops after Jean Grey died AGAIN, and one of the only survivors of a genocidal attack that killed 16 million mutants. Her powers are interesting as well – she’s a strong psychic from way back, but comic genius/god Grant Morrison also gave her the ability to turn her whole body into a diamond. Oh metaphor! She also wears an outfit seemingly made from a bandage. Empowerment indeed.
The other film concept is New Mutants, although that title doesn’t actually enter the USA Today article: "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. This is a truly fantastic idea, and one that I have been thinking about a lot. Hell, you could even call it X-Men: The New Mutants and have a Wolverine cameo is Hugh Jackman is willing to do it, making it a de facto X-Men 4. There are enough characters in the X Universe to populate a dozen films like this, and a couple of them are even interesting.