After an eight year absence, Halle Berry returned to the X-Men film franchise last year to reprise Storm for X-Men: Days of Future Past. Unfortunately, because most of the events in the apocalyptic future revolved around Wolverine, Professor X and Magneto, there wasn’t much time for Berry to shine, and Storm was basically reduced to a foot soldier against the Sentinels. Despite her reduced role, Berry is still fond of Storm, and is keen on the character getting her own spinoff film.
While talking at the panel for her CBS series Extant today at San Diego Comic-Con, Berry expressed her enthusiasm for the weather manipulating mutant and urged fans to let 20th Century Fox if they want to see a Storm spinoff. Here's what she said in regards to a potential standalone film in the future:
Of course, I love that character. I love what the X-Men series stands for. Absolutely. Fans have to tell Fox if that's something they're wanting!
Berry debuted as Storm in 2000’s X-Men as one of Professor Xavier’s original students and a member of the main X-Men team. She continued to play a major role in X2: X-Men United and X-Men: The Last Stand. Alexandra Shipp will play a teenage Storm next year in X-Men: Apocalypse, and it was also rumored earlier this year that Berry would cameo as the older Storm in the film, though this has yet to be verified. Storm was impaled and thrown off a cliff in X-Men: Days of Future Past, but thanks to Wolverine’s actions in the 1970s, she is now alive and well in the new timeline, so she can get into more adventures in the present era.
Although X-Men: Apocalypse will be the "conclusion" of the six X-Men films, the universe is continuing with spinoffs like Deadpool, Gambit and New Mutants. So there would certainly be room for a Berry-led Storm film in their film slate. That said, director Bryan Singer has also said that X-Men: Apocalypse also works as a "rebirth of younger, newer characters." This may imply that any films featuring the team’s mainstays will have the younger actors playing them rather than the original cast. So assuming a Storm film were to be made, it seems more likely that Shipp would be the one leading it. However, it’s like Berry said: if you want Storm to get her own spinoff, let the top brass at Fox know. Whether they’ll listen is an entirely different matter.
While not exactly new material, fans can see Storm next in X-Men: Days of Future Past-The Rogue Cut, which will be available for purchase on July 14.
