Simon Kinberg says he always envisioned Dark Phoenix as the “culmination” of the X-Men series

With The Walt Disney Company’s takeover of 20th Century Fox now complete, it’s expected that Marvel Studios will soon reboot the X-Men (and Fantastic Four) into the MCU, bringing to an end the near-twenty year series that is Fox’s X-Men franchise.

The final instalment (of the main series, at least – assuming The New Mutants does see the light of day) will be X-Men: Dark Phoenix, the directorial debut of long time X-Men writer and producer Simon Kinberg, who has revealed that he always approached the movie as the “culmination” of the franchise – even before the Disney acquisition first came about.

“From the beginning of conceiving what we were going to do with this film and writing it, which was three plus years ago, so long before there was a Disney merger, I felt like this was the natural culmination for this cycle of X-Men movies,” Kinberg told ComicBook. “Because it is seeing this family that you’ve come to love and know for how ever many films, and if you count the originals almost 20 years now, you see that family tested in a whole new way. You see that family start to fall apart in a real way for the first time, ultimately come back together.

“That felt like the culmination of a storyline or a cycle of these films,.” he continued. “And for me, and for most of the fans … Dark Phoenix is the ultimate and most iconic storyline in the X-Men universe. And so I didn’t know how we would top Dark Phoenix within this cycle. This felt like we had to earn our way back to Dark Phoenix. And I feel like we did hopefully, and beyond that felt like we’d want to sort of create an ending and the possibility of a new beginning. And that’s what we do on this film.”

SEE ALSO: X-Men: Dark Phoenix director says The Last Stand made the mistake of not going cosmic

Do you think X-Men: Dark Phoenix will be a fitting conclusion to Fox’s X-Men series? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below or tweet us @FlickeringMyth…

In Dark Phoenix, the X-Men face their most formidable and powerful foe: one of their own, Jean Grey. During a rescue mission in space, Jean is nearly killed when she is hit by a mysterious cosmic force. Once she returns home, this force not only makes her infinitely more powerful, but far more unstable. Wrestling with this entity inside her, Jean unleashes her powers in ways she can neither comprehend nor contain. With Jean spiraling out of control, and hurting the ones she loves most, she begins to unravel the very fabric that holds the X-Men together. Now, with this family falling apart, they must find a way to unite — not only to save Jean’s soul, but to save our very planet from aliens who wish to weaponize this force and rule the galaxy.