There's a lot of uncertainly about what's in store with the X-Men film franchise given that 20th Century Fox will soon be absorbed into the Disney empire... er, family. Dark Phoenix and The New Mutants are definitely on the way, but beyond those, it remains to be seen if spinoffs like X-Force and Gambit will ever see the light of day before the mutant property presumably becomes part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But that could be a long time away, and for now, 20th Century Fox is continuing to develop a number of X-Men projects. This includes Multiple Man, and here's what longtime X-Men producer Simon Kinberg had to say about its status:
Multiple Man, that script's being worked on right now.
It was first announced that a Multiple Man movie was in development last November, with James Franco being tapped to play the eponymous protagonist, Simon Kinberg producing the movie through his Genre Films production company and Wonder Woman's Allan Heinberg tackling the script. Nearly a year later, Kinberg confirmed to IGN that Multiple Man is still among the various X-Men movies in development as the clocks counts down to the Fox/Disney merger being carried out. Whether this means that Multiple Man will actually move to production someday remains to be seen, but in the meantime, the story is still being hashed out, so ideally we'll be updated on its progress again sooner rather than later.
As his moniker suggests, Multiple Man, real name Jamie Madrox, has the ability to create duplicates of himself. Each duplicate contains all of his memories, knowledge and skills, and when he reabsorbs a duplicate back into himself, he also acquires everything said duplicate learned during its existence. He was previously played by Eric Dane in X-Men: The Last Stand, where he joined Magneto's expanded Brotherhood of Mutants, and he's also appeared in X-Men: Evolution, Wolverine and the X-Men and various video games. Multiple Man wouldn't be James Franco's first venture into comic book movie territory, as he previously played Harry Osborn in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy.
Even though Fox is still developing Multiple Man and other X-Men movies, it feels like we're reaching the beginning of the end of this era of the superhero property's film history. The Dark Phoenix trailer earlier this week seemingly foreshadowed that this could be the last of the main X-Men movies, and it's highly doubtful that many of these spinoffs will be able to roll cameras before the X-Men characters are brought into the MCU. So I remain skeptical that Multiple Man will be among the lucky few that are made, but nevertheless, it's interesting to hear the script is still being worked on.
The X-Men franchise will continue when Dark Phoenix is released on February 14, 2019, and The New Mutants will follow on August 22 of the same year. Stay tuned to CinemaBlend for updates on those movies, Multiple Man and the other X-Men projects in development.
