KICK-ASS 2 director Jeff Wadlow is jumping back into the superhero genre without a moment to rest as he has now been hired by Fox to write and potentially direct X-FORCE, a spinoff of X-MEN. Earlier today, X-FORCE creator Rob Liefeld let slip that Fox had been quietly developing the spinoff since March, which prompted the release of the news that Wadlow is steering the ship.
X-FORCE, for those unaware, is a spinoff comic that debuted in the early '90's and was one of the best-selling books on the stands, moving more than 5 million copies of its first issue. The book served as a reboot of sorts for New Mutants, an X-Men spinoff book that introduced such popular contemporary characters as Cable, Deadpool, and Domino. This could bode well for those hoping for the long-gestating DEADPOOL movies, as the studio could test the waters with the character some more, which could in turn inspire that long-awaited greenlight for the Ryan Reynolds passion project. Cable, as well, is a staple character in the X-Universe who could easily take off, as he has in the comics world, getting his own series a number of times.
As a comic-book geek extraordinaire, you can bet your ass I have about ten copies of X-Force #1, not to mention the New Mutants issues that introduced Cable and Deadpool. In it's heyday, X-Force was a great book and has morphed of late into a very dark one, which has a team comprised of X-Men "assassins," much like a black ops offshoot of the band of merry mutants with a constantly shifting roster of members.
With X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST (May 23, 2014) and THE WOLVERINE (July 26, 2013) on the way and now X-FORCE in the pipeline it certainly appears that Fox is lining up a massive X-Men Cinematic Universe as they careen full speed ahead into franchise territory.
More as this develops.