Jeff Wadlow on his original plans for Fox’s X-Force trilogy

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Once upon a time, Jeff Wadlow (FANTASY ISLAND) was slated to bring X-FORCE to the big-screen for 20th Century Fox, but during the time that the project was in development, DEADPOOL 2 arrived on the scene and introduced Cable (Josh Brolin) before Wadlow had the chance to, and of course, Fox was acquired by Disney, who promptly pumped the breaks on just about every Marvel project the studio had in the works.

It remains to be seen what will happen with X-FORCE under Disney's banner, but Jeff Wadlow spoke with ComicBookMovie.com and revealed a few of his plans for what would have been an X-FORCE trilogy.

What I can share about my take on the property (as it's not really relevant any more since Deadpool 2 introduced Cable, and I wrote X-Force before Deadpool 1 even came out), is that it asked if X-Men was about mutants who get to go to private school with Wolverine and Professor X, and have the Blackbird swooping down to pick them up, what about the mutants that have to go to public school? What about the ones who don't have the benefactor looking out for them, and what about the kids who have to figure it out on their own? We then would have introduced that darker, more militant mentor in the form of Cable.

Jeff Wadlow continued: "I plotted out this three movie arc that took X-Force from what it was in the 90s with Rob Liefeld with a band of kids fighting for what they believe in, and then by the third film, the group would have grown and changed and lost and picked up some new members, and basically turned into Rick Remender's version of the X-Force in the early 2000s. That was a much darker hit squad and black ops team who had lost their way over the course of the three films." Although X-FORCE is up in the air at this point, Wadlow would still love to get involved with whatever Marvel Studios has planned for the mutants. "Kevin Feige, if you're reading this, I will do anything at all to work on your version of the X-Men and X-Force," Wadlow said. "I'm a filmmaker because of 90s comics, so I obviously love them dearly, and it was actually a dream come true for me to write X-Force and meet Rob Liefeld. I loved doing it and would of course do anything to be part of whatever new iteration they have planned."

Jeff Wadlow's FANTASY ISLAND is now playing in theaters, so be sure to check out a review from our own Chris Bumbray.