Fox's X-Men cinematic universe is growing and growing very quickly at that. There are a lot of films coming down the pipeline, like X-Men: Apocalypse, Deadpool, Gambit, and New Mutants. In addition, there's two television series coming as well: Legion and Hellfire. Writer and producer Simon Kinberg is behind a lot of it and he recently talked to Collider about everything mutant coming down the pipeline and he revealed quite a bit about what is coming next for the mutant universe.
Kinberg stated that they're currently working on the first draft of the New Mutants and there's a plan to start shooting soon. Josh Boone, who directed The Fault in Our Stars, is currently working on the new project. Boone loves comics and more importantly, grew up reading New Mutants, so he created a big presentation that Kinberg loved. The plan is to take this to the big screen.
As for Deadpool, Kinberg discussed the freedom in making the upcoming film.
There was so much freedom to making the movie, I think because the studio understood that it has to be a radical film, a hard-R, and it has to satisfy the core fans, it just was allowed to be in all the best ways a weirder film than pretty much any other movie a studio is gonna release.
He went on to say that they want to be "as true as possible to the essence of the Deadpool canon." They allude to the idea that Deadpool identifies as pansexual but the film covers the love story with Vanessa, but this could be something that they could deeper into later on down the road.
He confirmed this takes place in the X-Men Universe, but not the same time period as the current run of X-Men films, which all take place in the past. However, it acknowledges everything that's happened with the new X-Men trilogy.
Gambit is moving forward as well.
That we have a director in and I don’t know if I’m allowed to say who it is yet because his deal isn’t done, but it’s somebody we’re excited about, and somebody I adore, and hopefully we can make an announcement soon about that. But we’ve been spending a lot of time together—Channing, [Reid Carolin, Tatum’s producing partner], [screenwriter Joshua Zetumer], the director, and myself—just working on the script, and we hope to start shooting next spring.
The problem is that the release date for Gambit is on October 16, 2016, and Kinberg said that it's going to be a challenge to hit that actual date with shooting in the spring.
As for the third Wolverine film, Kinberg said they're close to a script but don't know when the start date is yet. He went on to say that it's something Hugh Jackman is really excited about and Kinberg is impressed with director Jim Mangold because he's a great storyteller. He continued by saying all these films are character driven rather than setting up future films.
As for the upcoming Legion and Hellfire shows, Kinberg said they're both active and they hope Hellfire starts shooting next year for the pilot. The pilot for Legion starts shooting at the beginning of next year for FX.