Just a few years ago, the X-Men film franchise wasn’t looking so good. We had Brett Ratner closing out what Bryan Singer began, then Gavin Hood‘s first foray into blockbuster filmmaking not going as planned with X-Men Origins: Wolverine. But with Matthew Vaughn successfully providing a new take last year and James Mangold attempting to give a different angle to Hugh Jackman‘s character, 20th Century Fox is back in a promising place.
We’ve now got a few updates on the next two films in the franchise. First up, some have been curious to see just how, or if at all, Vaughn’s 2014-bound X-Men: Days of Future Past will link with next summer’s The Wolverine and today we have a hint. After a few tweets last week, We Got This Covered have a source that indicates Famke Janssen (aka Jean Grey) flew to the Sydney set to shoot a cameo. No other details are known, but Janssen also recently told MTV that we shouldn’t count out her making an appearance in Vaughn’s film, so we’ll have to see.
As we know, the X-Men: First Class follow-up does feature time-travel and as creative consultant Mark Millar opened up to SFX (via Digital Spy) about, “Vaughn is going for a big sci-fi style thing” with the film, even saying its “X-Men meets The Terminator.” Perhaps these timelines will cross-over in what Millar describes an “ambitious” undertaking that has “everything in one film,” including “the apocalyptic future” and even more X-Men franchisers will take part. But for now, see a few set photos from The Wolverine below which feature a dead man and Will Yun Lee as the katana-equipped mutant Silver Samurai, thanks to Tumblr.
Also starring Svetlana Khodchenkova, Hiroyuki Sanada, Hal Yamanouchi, Tao Okamoto, Rila Fukushima and Brian Tee, The Wolverine arrives on July 26th, 2013, while X-Men: Days of Future Past lands just a year later on July 18th, 2014.