Daredevil’s Drew Goddard To Take The Reins Of X-Force
by Erik Amaya
The X-Force film slides closer to being a reality.
Deadline reports that writer/director Drew Goddard will write and direct 20th Century Fox’s adaption of Marvel’s X-Force. The film will center on “Deadpool and Cable leading a Black Ops force of down and dirty mutant warriors who are far more ruthless than their X-Men counterparts.”
That description is also a rather concise summary of the original X-Force title. Born from the pages of New Mutants, writer Fabian Nicieza and artist Rob Liefeld took Cable and remaining New Mutants on an odyssey of wetworks, big shoulder pads and general mayhem. Liefeld would leave the title and Marvel itself within a year of X-Force‘s debut, but Nicieza and subsequent creative teams kept the title going until 2001. It was then regularly relaunched and revamped, settling into a rotating roster of mutants willing to follow in Cable’s mercenary footsteps; even as he long ago left the team.
Goddard will be familiar to Marvel fans as one of the forces behind Daredevil. He developed the Netflix show in its first season before departing for other pastures. He also wrote Ridley Scott’s The Martian; which must’ve been the best damned script in the last twenty years to survive Scott’s style of storytelling.
Ryan Reynolds and James Brolin are said to be returning as Deadpool and Cable, but is unclear if their Deadpool 2 costar Zazie Beetz will also join them as Domino.
Curiously, Fox is also making a New Mutants film, which may suggest some crossover of characters between the two groups. Get your fantasy groupings and casting ready. But expect X-Force no earlier than 2019.
