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Hot off of two comic book adaptations at the time, in “Kick-Ass” and “Kick-Ass 2” Jeff Wadlow was snagged to write, with an eye to direct, an adaptation of Marvel’s “X-Force” for Twentieth Century Fox.
As the name suggests, the film would’ve fixed on characters you’ll find within Marvel’s “X-Men” Universe – primarily, ‘Cable’.
It was a plum gig for Wadlow, who kicked off his career with the Jon Bon Jovi-starring “Cry Wolf” in 2005, collaborating with “X-Men” series producer Lauren Schuler-Donner on such a colossal project.
Alas, “Deadpool” ended up taking precedence and “X-Force” went away.
Out promoting his latest flick “Fantasy Island“, Wadlow told ComicBookMovie what he had in mind for the film.
“Kevin Feige, if you’re reading this, I will do anything at all to work on your version of the X-Men and X-Force. I’m a filmmaker because of 90s comics, so I obviously love them dearly, and it was actually a dream come true for me to write X-Force and meet Rob Liefeld. I loved doing it and would of course do anything to be part of whatever new iteration they have planned.
“What I can share about my take on the property (as it’s not really relevant any more since Deadpool 2 introduced Cable, and I wrote X-Force before Deadpool 1 even came out), is that it asked if X-Men was about mutants who get to go to private school with Wolverine and Professor X, and have the Blackbird swooping down to pick them up, what about the mutants that have to go to public school? What about the ones who don’t have the benefactor looking out for them, and what about the kids who have to figure it out on their own? We then would have introduced that darker, more militant mentor in the form of Cable.
“I plotted out this three movie arc that took X-Force from what it was in the 90s with Rob Liefeld with a band of kids fighting for what they believe in, and then by the third film, the group would have grown and changed and lost and picked up some new members, and basically turned into Rick Remender’s version of the X-Force in the early 2000s. That was a much darker hit squad and black ops team who had lost their way over the course of the three films.
“They’re plans which never came to fruition, but I’m super grateful to have had the opportunity to have just written the script.”
No doubt Disney will get an “X-Force” film off the ground at some stage, though it’ll likely be a complete do-over.
“X-Force” is merely one of several high-concept projects Wadlow has been attached to and seen fall through – with “Point Break : Indo”, a sequel to the original classic, another of his ‘could’ve been’s.
