Jeff Wadlow outlines his '90s-inspired X-Force film trilogy that never was

As we've said many times before, Hollywood is a never-ending stream of "What If ... ?" scenarios. Today, we're talking about Jeff Wadlow's trilogy of X-Force/New Mutants movies, which he began writing before the first Deadpool adaptation hit theaters in 2016.

Chatting with ComicBookMovie.com, the Truth or Dare and Fantasy Island director outlined his script for a pretty epic big-screen Marvel series we'll probably never get to see. While Wadlow has spoken on the subject before, he's never gone into this much detail.

"It asked if X-Men was about mutants who get to go to private school with Wolverine and Professor X, and have the Blackbird swooping down to pick them up. What about the mutants that have to go to public school?," he revealed. "What about the ones who don't have the benefactor looking out for them? And what about the kids who have to figure it out on their own? We then would have introduced that darker, more militant mentor in the form of Cable."

Credit: Marvel Comics

From there, it was just a matter of drawing on the original, '90s-era X-Force run from writer Fabian Nicieza and artist Rob Liefeld — the co-creators of characters like Deadpool, Cable, and Domino.

"I plotted out this three-movie arc that took X-Force from what it was in the '90s with Rob Liefeld, with a band of kids fighting for what they believe in," continued Wadlow. "And then by the third film, the group would have grown and changed and lost and picked up some new members, and basically turned into Rick Remender's version of the X-Force in the early 2000s. That was a much darker hit squad and black ops team who had lost their way over the course of the three films."

This all became moot when Fox decided to make Deadpool instead. The sequel — 2018's Deadpool 2 — introduced Cable (Josh Brolin), Domino (Zazie Beetz), and a more comedic version of the X-Force lineup. Drew Goddard was supposed to helm a spinoff, but that project reportedly got axed when Disney purchased 20th Century Fox last March.

Credit: Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images

Now that Marvel Studios has the screen rights to properties like the X-Men and Fantastic Four, it can start to integrate them into the MCU sometime in the future. In addition, the company is still committed to a third Deadpool with Ryan Reynolds in the main role.

"Kevin Feige, if you're reading this, I will do anything at all to work on your version of the X-Men and X-Force," concluded Wadlow. "I'm a filmmaker because of '90s comics, so I obviously love them dearly, and it was actually a dream come true for me to write X-Force and meet Rob Liefeld. I loved doing it and would of course do anything to be part of whatever new iteration they have planned."

Concept art from the filmmaker's un-produced trilogy can be glimpsed here.

Josh Boone's The New Mutants, the final X-Men flick of the Fox era, opens in theaters April 3.