X-Men: Apocalypse Co-Writer Talks The Future Of The Franchise & The Titular Villian

With X-Men: Apocalypse, Fox now has more pressure than ever before for one of their Marvel [...]

By ComicBook.com Staff

With X-Men: Apocalypse, Fox now has more pressure than ever before for one of their Marvel Comics based films to do well. After the failure of their Fantastic Four reboot, it's up to the X-Men (with some help from their pal Deadpool a little earlier in 2016) to save the day.

Over at IGN, the co-writer of the film Michael Dougherty stopped by their offices for a video interview about his upcoming horror film Krampus. Of course, that didn't mean they weren't going to tackle X-Men, too, a franchise he returned to after over a decade, when he wrote X-Men 2.

"It felt like a reunion," Dougherty said. "Bryan Singer got the band back together, with Bryan, Myself, Dan Harris, and Simon Kinberg." That team together "felt like a comfortable shoe" for the writer.

Apocalypse, as a character, is "really tricky" due to the grounded nature Singer tries to keep the X-Men films in. "So let's say the first mutant really was worshiped as a deity. Once you take that seed and run with it, the character writes itself." It's a flipping of the modern-day view of mutants, where they're persecuted. "What happens when that character enters our world where everything is flipped? It's strange to think about but actually makes him relatable in a way. It gave him a heart."

As for the future of the franchise, that wasn't something that Harris and Dougherty worked on much. "We were brought in just for the story of this film. We were really focused on laying the groundwork for this film," he said. He does expect it to keep growing though. "The X-Men universe is built for expansion," the writer said. He specifically called out the Young Jean Grey as a character that's begging for more exploration.

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