The Kidd here...
While all of us were imagining the possibilities of DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES last week, the release date of the next X-Men movie, currently untitled, was established - July 18, 2014 - rather quietly. Details on where Matthew Vaughn is headed for the next installment are incredibly scarce, and the only real sense we've gotten, from Simon Kinberg no less, is that there will be a heavy dose of Magneto.
But we may now know what's going on with the next X-Men movie... and it could involve multiple timelines.
One of my little birds Weapon X recently dropped me some information that 20th Century Fox had recently registered the title DAYS OF FUTURE PAST with the MPAA Title Registration Bureau. The Bureau exists for studios and productions companies to stake their claims on certain titles that they intend to release and distribute, so that others can stray from using a similar title.
To the average person, DAYS OF FUTURE PAST might not mean anything, but, if you're an X-Men fan, you know this feeds directly into that neighborhood of the Marvel Universe.
DAYS OF FUTURE PAST was a two-issue story arc of the X-Men comics, published by Marvel in 1981, that dealt with alternative timelines. In an alternative future, mutants were incarcerated in internment camps. However, the Kitty Pryde of that time transfers her mind to the Kitty Pryde of now in order to prevent that from ever happening. The assassination of Senator Robert Kelly by the Brotherhood is what sets off this chain of events, and now with the X-Men made aware of the future, they must try to stop it from happening and... well, it's almost like BACK TO THE FUTURE PART II, but with mutants.
This brings Sentinels into the mix, and this also brings forth that alternative future, which still exists on an alternative timeline as opposed to disappearing altogether. Could that be a potential link to the restart of the traditional X-MEN franchise, or the long-rumored X-MEN 4, which could be entirely rebooted without touching the original trilogy of films?
I wouldn't expect the storyline to be followed exactly. However, it sounds very possible that a tweaked version of it may be the way Fox is going with the X-Men.
This sounds like no coincidence.
-Billy Donnelly
"The Infamous Billy The Kidd"
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