X-Men: Supernova Synopsis, Working Title, and New Production Date

The X-Men movies have a very exciting future. Next month sees the release of Hugh Jackman's (possibly) final turn as Wolverine in Logan, and the coming years will bring Deadpool 2 and New Mutants, along with potential outings for X-Force and Gambit. However, despite it being almost nine months since the last film's release, not much has been known about what's next in the main series.

X-Men: Apocalypse wasn't the best received by fans or critics, leading to questions about whether the franchise would move into more spinoffs. However, after some production rumors, last month a potential title for a new X-movie, X-Men: Supernova, was discovered, which seemed to point towards Jean Grey's Dark Phoenix arc (something explicitly teased in Apocalypse) coming to life. A working title backed this up, and now we have some more concrete info.

My Entertainment World has revealed several new details about the film that chimes with all this. In a report on Supernova, they confirmed it will be shooting in Montreal (something rumored a few months ago), that the production start date is June 15, 2017 and have even got us a plot synopsis that expands the series' scope massively:

"Gathered together by Professor Charles Xavier to protect a world that fears and hates them, the X-Men had fought many battles, been on adventures that spanned galaxies, grappled enemies of limitless might, but none of this could prepare them for the most shocking struggle they would ever face. One of their own members, Jean Grey, has gained power beyond all comprehension, and that power has corrupted her absolutely! Now they must decide if the life of the woman they cherish is worth the existence of the entire universe!"

When we last left the main series X-Men, the core team was assembled and ready to be trained. It was presumed that, in keeping with the period jumping forward a decade at a time (First Class was set in 1962, Days of Future Past in 1973 and Apocalypse in 1983), the series would move into the nineties, the time of the classic X-Men: The Animated Series, and the more comic-sounding adventures would seem to chime with that; as Bryan Singer hinted at around Apocalypse's release, the gang have indeed been to space.

This would further suggest that, while the Pheonix force was already seen within Jean Grey in the previous film, this will be a more faithful version of the iconic X-Men arc - it's an ancient being that corrupts the already-powerful mutant, leading to her destroying entire planets - than the previous attempt in Brett Ratner's X-Men: The Last Stand. That take was a major disappointment and one that fans have been eager to see redone (especially after Days of Future Past's canon re-write), so this is very good news. There is the question of whether Sophie Turner can handle such a big role - the Game of Thrones star was one of the weaker parts of Apocalypse - but with more time to develop the character and accent she will hopefully be up to the task.

That start date of June 15th is a change from previous reports where Michel Trudel, president of MEL Studios, said the film's shoot will be kicking off there in May. It's a minor delay, but may be due to the project's gradual development; at the very least, Fox needs to find a new director - Singer has stated he won't be back to direct the mutants (on the big screen at least).

Production Weekly (who first reported the Supernova name) have also revealed the working title for the film; as well as being known as "Dark Phoenix", it's being called "Teen Spirit". This will be the production title used to avoid too much of a furor around the shoot, rather than anything representative of the movie itself, but does still highlight how things are moving ahead.