Okay, the MPAA Title Registration Bureau is a voluntary, non-governmental deal that allows studios to basically say, "Hey, we're thinking of calling our movie The Rock 2: Assault on Vatican City" once a film is close to production, so as to avoid any confusion or title-squabbling. Now, Ain't It Cool is reporting that 20th Century Fox has registered the title Days of Future Past.
That's a title that should ring a bell for longtime fans of the X-adventures in Marvel Comics. It refers to a two-issue story in 1981 by the hugely influential and popular combination of writer Chris Claremont and penciller John Byrne. The idea is that a future version of Kitty Pryde shows up to warn the X-Men of an alternative timeline in which Xavier's team fails to stop the Brother of Evil Mutants from assassinating Senator Robert Kelly, leading to a dystopian future with mutants in internment camps and most of the team hunted down and killed.
Now, the title might just be a catchy name for the next X-Men, but it would actually make sense for story to take some inspiration from Clarmont's paradox-filled tale. X-Men: First Class adhered in some ways to the chronology of the previous X-movies, while openly disregarding other elements, making it somewhat more of a reboot than a straight prequel. Like 2009's Star Trek, the time-travel element could be used to free up the franchise in its own timeline without cancelling out a continuation of the contemporary X-Men, which Fox still hopes to continue in some fashion.
Last year, just before X-Men: First Class was released, director and co-writer Matthew Vaughn publicly stated that he had an idea that a sequel would open with the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, where it would reveal that Magneto was present at Dealey Plaza and in-control of the bullet. That notion could be utilized for a First Class version of the story, with Kennedy filling in for Kelly, a character played by Bruce Davison in Bryan Singer's first X-Men. In much the same way that a fictionalized take on the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis played into First Class, Kennedy's assassination could be an inciting incident in X-Men: Days of Future Past.
Simon Kinberg is currently writing the sequel, and in February he spoke very broadly about what we can expect from the next round of mutant action. Vaughn is set to return as director, while most everyone in the cast, including the likes of Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, January Jones, Lucas Till, and Caleb Landry Jones, are contractually obligated to reprise their roles.
Production is tentatively scheduled to begin next January, once Jennifer Lawrence has finished shooting the sequel, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.
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