Via SciFi Wire, we get this craptacular bit of (hopefully inaccurate) Hollywood rumor-mongering:
Twentieth Century Fox is gearing up to continue its X-Men franchise with a younger set of mutants, Variety reported.
The studio has tapped Gossip Girl creator Josh Schwartz to write X-Men: First Class. He’d also been offered a chance to direct the film, but declined.
Schwartz, the creator and executive producer of The CW’s teen soap hit as well as Fox’s youth-centric The O.C. and NBC’s Chuck, is expected to inject a next-gen sensibility into the superhero series, which has collectively earned $1.2 billion worldwide.
Really? Let’s put aside the fact that the First Class title—at least in the Marvel Universe—is about just that: the first class of Xavier’s X-Men. You know: Iceman, Beast, Cyclops, Marvel Girl/Jean Grey, and Angel, characters that are already present in the movies. Let’s put that aside for the sake of, ah, artistic license.
But the idea of putting the luminary in charge of such vapid Tiger-Beat-fodder (yeah, I have no idea if that’s still an extant teen publication, so sue me, I’m getting old) as Gossip Girl and The O.C. (Chuck may well be an exception—I haven’t watched it, but I’ve read good things) smacks of shark-jumping, demographic-baiting, and the ever-destructive hand of some over-zealous marketing drone.
Oh, Bryan Singer, why did you abandon the magnificent Danger Room you created for a half-assed Fortress of Solitude, leaving us in the hands of Brett “let’s-blow-shit-up-with-mutant-powers” Ratner? Won’t you come back, once you’re done fooling around with Tom Cruise (yeah, I did it again. I just really like that song)?
