20th Century Fox has tapped the creator of Netflix’s Daredevil, and The Martian screenwriter Drew Goddard to write and direct X-Force, a spinoff film about a team of superheroes led by Deadpool and Cable, according to a report from Deadline.
Deadline describes the superhero team as a “Black Ops force of down and dirty mutant warriors,” who are more violent than their gentler X-Men counterparts. The team will be headlined by Ryan Reynold’s Deadpool, Josh Brolin’s Cable, and Zazie Beetz’ Domino, who’s set to be introduced in next June’s Deadpool sequel.
Fox already has a packed schedule when it comes to its X-Men franchise: X-Men: New Mutants is coming from The Fault in Our Stars director Josh Boone next April; Deadpool 2 hits theaters in June; and Simon Kinberg’s X-Men: Dark Phoenix is slated for release in November. There’s no release date yet for X-Force, but it shows that Fox isn’t abandoning its darker, edgier takes on the superhero world.
Following Deadpool, Fox has shifted its approach to superhero films away from the bigger blockbusters that Marvel has regularly churned out as part of its overarching Marvel Cinematic Universe, opting instead for smaller and cheaper films. That approach seems to have worked thus far, and it will be interesting to see if this film’s team-up will include characters from the other parts of the studio’s various mutant films, taking on the role that The Avengers, The Defenders, or Justice League play in their respective universes.