Having flirted with the superhero genre on Sony’s abandoned Spider-Man spinoff The Sinister Six and Netflix’s Marvel series Daredevil, Drew Goddard has now signed on to write and direct the X-Men spinoff X-Force for 20th Century Fox.
Deadline reports that regular X-Men producers Simon Kinberg and Lauren Shuler Donner will produce along with Deadpool star Ryan Reynolds, who will be reprising the role of the Merc with a Mouth alongside his Deadpool 2 co-star Josh Brolin as Cable.
X-Force launched in New Mutants #100 in 1991, and revolves around a militant offshoot of the X-Men, generally led by Cable. Fox has spent several years in development on the project, hiring Kick-Ass 2 helmer Jeff Wadlow to write and direct back in 2013, only for the project to be shelved when Deadpool got the green light. You can check out some concept art from that iteration here.
Goddard is currently gearing up to shoot his next film Bad Times at the El Royale, but has apparently already finished the script for X-Force and will move straight onto the mutant superhero adaptation straight after.
Originally published September 7, 2017. Updated March 3, 2020.
