New Star Wars Movie! Oh Yeah, And Bryan Singer To Direct X-Men: Days Of Future Past

Twenty four or so hours ago the news that Bryan Singer, the director of the first two X-Men movies that ushered in the modern age of generally excellent superhero movies made by A-List directors who give a shit about the characters as opposed to slumming and giving the thumbs-up to nipples and asscracks on the hero’s costume, had literally just signed to direct the fifth X-Men movie, Days of Future Past, would be the biggest geek movie news of the past six months. Particularly considering that the time travel nature of the story could allow Singer to liberally include cast members from later-set his X-Men movies, which appears to be a thing that is actually happening.

Yup, just yesterday morning, the word that Singer might be taking over from Matthew Vaughn, director of X-Men: First Class, while keeping Vaughn on as a producer (which, on one level, is good news, since Vaughn did a damn good job directing First Class, so I’m glad he’ll be involved… although the role of producer in movies and TV can vary widely from an active, hands-on role in development to, “Yeah, yeah; put my name wherever you want in the credits, so long as it’s on the right place on my check.”) would be the biggest news in genre film, particularly considering the change in directors so far hasn’t had an effect on the projected July 18, 2014 release date.

Yeah, this time yesterday, the concept of the return of Bryan Singer to the X-Men franchise might seem like redemption for the guy. Singer jumped from the franchise at the height of its popularity in order to direct Superman Returns in the hope of returning the Superman franchise to its glory days of Superman II, instead returning it to its “glory days” of Superman IV: The Quest For Peace. He then reunited with his Usual Suspects writer, Christopher McQuarrie, to direct the Tom Cruise starred Valkyrie… about a month and a half before Tom went Full Xenu. Singer then spent a couple of years in the weeds before signing on to direct Jack The Giant Killer, starring Nicholas Hoult (say it with me: who?) which is due out in March. So just yesterday, Singer’s very-recent signing to return to X-Men could be seen as redemption for a guy who made some dicey choices that haven’t paid off particularly well…

..but that was yesterday. Today, I guarantee you that every cynical comics geek in the world is thinking, “Singer, you poor, doomed bastard… if you’d only waited about two days before signing on the dotted line, you coulda chucked your hat into the ring to direct a fucking Star Wars movie. If you didn’t have bad luck, you wouldn’t have any Goddamned luck at all.”

That said, Singer’s X-Men movies are, in my opinion, the best of all the films in the franchise, and the news that he’s coming back for Days of Future Past is actually pretty damned exciting… but after yesterday, Singer could have announced that the next X-Men film would include Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, Christian Bale as Batman, Christopher Reeve as Superman and the formula for the cure for cancer, and all anyone would talk about would be whether or not Disney would write the check to get Harrison Ford back as Han Solo.

(via Deadline and Bleeding Cool)