By: Russ Burlingame on June 5, 2012
Ain’t It Cool News reports that last week, during the furious run of release date changes and announcements, 20th Century Fox lined up the title Days of Future Past with the Motion Picture Association of America’s Title Registration Bureau. The bureau exists as a way to allow studios to stake a claim on a title to avoid embarrassing overlaps.
That title, of course, is familiar to comic book fans as one of the most beloved X-Men stories of all time.
Having taken place in Uncanny X-Men #141-142, Days of Future Past featured Kitty Pryde spurring the X-Men to action against the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, who are plotting to assassinate an anti-mutant U.S. Senator. In the comics, his death provokes a massive reaction from the U.S. government that results in mutants being forced into internment camps. When Pryde manages to project her knowledge back in time to her younger self, the team’s mission becomes to protect the man and change the course of time.
Ain’t It Cool speculates that the creation of an alternative future might give Fox the opportunity to continue the X-Men: First Class franchise into the future, where it can run alongside the first three existing films without the need to reboot the franchise or retcon popular, existing stories.
As often as not, titles registered with the title bureau aren’t necessarily used to make the actual films. Still, the earliest reports that Sony’s Spider-Man reboot would be titled “The Amazing Spider-Man,” a rumor that turned out to be completely true, originated the same way.
