by: Joshua Outred – Staff Writer

It seems things may be shifting around for Fox’s X-Men, The Hollywood Reporter has gotten wind of some shuffling around for the well established Marvel franchise. Fox, who have had the rights to the X-Men series since the ’90’s, are reportedly re-evaluating the franchise, with the likelihood of a reboot.

Sources tell THR that Bryan Singer will not be returning to helm the next X-Men film, and that frequent X-Men producer and Star Wars: Rebels Executive Producer, Simon Kinberg, is already in the process of writing the script for the next film. Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, James McAvoy and Nicholas Hoult have all now finished their three-picture deals, the question is; will Fox renew these costly contracts, or will they opt for a soft reboot? With a reconfiguration of the X-Men franchise at Fox, attention also turns to the other superhero properties owned by the studio.

Last month Deadpool 2 lost its director, Tim Miller, and soon after composer, Tom Holkenborg also parted way with the project. Rumours point heavily towards, David Leitch (John Wick), taking up the director’s chair. However large the shakeup with the sequel’s creatives is, sources tell THR that Deadpool 3 is already in the planning phase, with X-Force playing a part in the story.

It really does seem as if Fox are going back to the drawing board with their Marvel properties. X-Men: Apocalypse took home $544 million worldwide, a huge difference to 2014’s Days of Future Past, which earned a massive $748 million at the box office. With such a large loss in profit, the push of the refresh button seems inevitable, and necessary, coming in with a fresh director may well help reinvigorate the franchise, something I feel it really needs. As for Deadpool, well, things may not be as bad as first thought, if they’re already planning out the third film, then Fox most likely has confidence that the sequel’s can make the huge profit of the first film, and bringing in David Leitch would be a superb idea (I loved John Wick), his visual language has Deadpool written all over it!