X-Men Origins: Wolverine may be just a few months away from slashing its way into cinemas, but it’s taken a while for concrete developments to take place on the other X-Men prequel, X-Men Origins: Magneto, which was announced around the same time as the Hugh Jackman starrer.
However, we spoke to its producer, the doyenne of the X-films, Lauren Shuler Donner, recently, and she confirmed that it’s still in the works. “I think first we wanted to make Wolverine, and then David [Goyer, the attached director] took another film, and there wasn’t a lot of time,” she said. “But I’d like to make that – we’ll have to see.”
Details of the plot have remained vague thus far, but Shuler Donner was happy to tell us shed a little light on things. “We have a script on Magneto which is actually sort of Magneto and Charles Xavier,” she said. “It’s Erik and Charles in their early, early years.”
And, as if to further confirm that, the industry bible Production Weekly has added a synopsis for the Fox film, which suggests that Xavier “was a soldier in the allied force that liberated the concentration camps” in which Magneto is interred at the beginning of Bryan Singer’s X-Men.
“The professor meets Magneto after the war and while they bond over the realisation that they are alike in their special powers, their differences soon turn them into enemies.”
Sounds intriguing. The relationship between Xavier and Lehnsherr is one of the most successful elements of all three X-movies and, even though Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellen won’t be playing the young ‘uns, we’re still hugely excited by a movie detailing their early relationship. Fingers crossed that Fox puts this on a fast track, but we suspect that Magneto’s fate will be determined by the extent of Wolverine’s success.