In the sterling effort to beat a franchise to death for all the money they can make, Coming Soon are reporting that 20th Century Fox have acquired Sheldon Turner to write the second spin off from the X-Men series entitled Magneto.
The original “X-Men” film began with a prologue that showed Magneto as a child being led to a concentration camp by Nazis, and that is the period in which the new film will take place. Since the character will be seen almost exclusively in his formative years, it is not clear whether McKellen will be in the film at all, says the trade…
…The storyline will heavily involve Professor X (played by Patrick Stewart in the films). That character was a soldier in the allied force that liberated the concentration camps. The professor meets Magneto after the war, and while they bond over the realization that they are alike in their special powers, their differences soon turn them into enemies.
Sounds like an interesting take, and despite my cynicism at the money making turn of Fox, I think there could be a lot of good material to be had out of this. However, the paragraph I pulled out of the middle of that quote made me laugh. Turner’s pitch was stereotypical Hollywood pitch, the kind of thing you’d see in Swimming with Sharks or some other satirical look at the movie business.
“I pitched a film that is almost ‘The Pianist’ meets ‘X-Men,’ about a guy who, after watching his family slaughtered, has an awakening of his powers and seeks revenge,” Turner said.
Oh that’s good! Still, it does work for pulling together an idea of what they are heading towards with the Magneto plot. My only concern is for Turner and his previous work, or rather should we say current work, with Untitled Texas Chainsaw Massacre Prequel and The Amityville Horror being two of the six projects in some form of development, there’s not a lot of proof out there of just how good he really is.
Still, who could go wrong with such wonderful source material as the early years of Magneto and Professor X?
