Simon Kinberg is the producer for Fox’s X-Men: Days of Future Past and is currently writing and producing their Fantastic Four reboot. The studio has now tapped Kinberg in an attempt to create a Marvel-like universe that will include multiple movies and character story arcs.
They may be a bit late to the party, but there’s no doubt they’ve got some popular Marvel characters to flesh out.
The first two universes he’ll be working to expand are the Fantastic Four reboot and X-Men. X-Men is already moving into its own universe as we reported that Bryan Singer let loose the fact that he is working on another X-Men film which will feature the character Apocalypse.
The goal will be to use these franchises and start interlocking them together by keeping them all in the same film universe like Marvel has for Thor, Captain America, Iron Man, culminating with The Avengers, and their latest project Guardians of the Galaxy. It’s no surprise that many studios are trying to find their own Kevin Feige, who runs all of Marvel’s franchises and keeps them in the same universe (Along with Avengers’ director Joss Whedon).
The difference here is Kinberg is much more of a writer-producer than say Marvel’s Kevin Feige, who doesn’t do any writing for the Marvel universe. Man of Steel’s writer/producer David S. Goyer is another key guy who is attempting to pull all of DC comic characters into one cohesive universe. Batman Vs Superman is their latest attempt to create a universe filled with multiple characters, including the recently cast Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman.
Fox clearly has a lot of faith in Kinberg, as they recently hired him to write the first Fantastic Four reboot, and now they’re laying this on his shoulders. His projects must be coming along nicely, and we’re definitely excited about how X-Men: Days of Future Past turns out, having been blown away by its first trailer.
Kinberg tells THR, “I have a lot of ideas on how to built those brands and do what everybody is thinking of these days: Be like Marvel, I want to be able to build stories over multiple movies.”
He wrote his first film with Fox, which was 2005’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. He’s currently a producer on Cinderella for Disney and recently worked with director Neil Blomkamp on Elysium – the Matt Damon sci-fi.
Possibly one of his more exciting future projects is writing and producing one of the next Star Wars films, so Kinberg has his hands in just about everything and Fox is ready to place him in their fold to create a more Marvel-esq universe for the characters they hold the rights to.
He says that Fox has “always been incredibly generous with me and trusting me with movies. They treat me like a partner and not an employee.” Fox seems to feel the same for Simon saying, “Simon is one of the best out there. We feel very lucky that he calls Fox his home and hope to build our slates together for many years to come.”
Kinberg has revealed that while he wants to work on the current franchises that are in play, his main focus will be to create original works or adaptations that he feels can pull in wider audiences. He says, “There is a special kind of satisfaction on working on a story that no one has ever heard before.”
We’re glad to see that Fox has seemingly found “their guy” for creating a more cohesive universe for Fox’s characters and franchises and we look forward to seeing how well Simon Kinberg can put them all in one successful universe.