X-Men: Days of Future Past may just have opened in cinemas [read our review here], but talk is already shifting towards the next instalment of Fox’s X-Men franchise, and during an interview with Movie Pilot writer-producer Simon Kinberg has opened up about the titular villain for 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse and how they plan to approach his character…
“It’s really been about how do we give him [Apocalypse], most importantly, a very human and relatable motivation so that as extreme and insane as his methods are, there is something, you know, understandable, almost empathetic about his motivation. Some of that is in the books, some of that is us building on that. You know, fully dimensionalizing the character, but it is a huge part of the task of adapting the story of Apocalypse. It is making him, while larger than life also dow to a human, emotional scale… We’re definitely approaching him as a super charismatic leader that will draw people to his cause. So far, in the X-Men movies, there really are two leaders. You know, there’s Eric / Magneto and what he did with the Brotherhood and Charles / Professor Xavier and what he did with the X-Men. Apocalypse presents a new leader, the darkest leader in the franchise.”
Kinberg then went on to touch upon the addition of Channing Tatum to the cast in the role of Gambit (despite the fact Tatum has revealed he’s yet to officially sign on the dotted line): “I think Gambit’s one of the coolest characters that hasn’t been heavily featured [in the franchise]. I mean, he was in the first Wolverine movie, but he hasn’t really been heavily featured in the main X-Men movies. I think Channing will be amazing playing him. What I like about the character is that my favorite characters in the comics are anti-heroes like Batman, like Wolverine, like Iron Man. I think Gambit fits into that classification because he’s a thief, he’s rogue, he’s a little destructive. I think he’s one of the more dynamic characters in the X-Men world. He’s certainly one as a fan that could be explored more.”
X-Men: Apocalypse is set for release on May 27th, 2016, with a cast that so far includes James McAvoy (Professor Xavier), Michael Fassbender (Magneto), Jennifer Lawrence (Mystique), Nicholas Hoult (Beast) and Hugh Jackman (Wolverine).
