Kinberg: There are X-MEN characters that can justify their own movie or series.

Mega producer/writer Simon Kinberg recently spoke with Moviefone about the ever-expanding franchise and where it currently sits. After the surprising success of DEADPOOL and with the development of FX’s LEGION series coming soon, he says that the sensibility at 20th Century Fox has changed a bit.

“The success of that [Deadpool] movie showed the studio that not just the mainline ‘X-Men’ movies, but there are characters — and characters with different tones and different vibes, that can justify their own movies as well,” he said.

“So GAMBIT and DEADPOOL and NEW MUTANTS and even others … we’re really serious about making, and then, like the way Marvel has done so brilliantly, the Marvel Studios have done so brilliantly, feeding them in and out of each other’s stories. Building these larger tapestries that you can watch one movie and enjoy it, and that can be your only experience of an ‘X-Men’ movie, but if you watch all of them together, you get a deeper, richer experience.”

On the ‘Legion’ series being made with showrunner Noah Hawley, Kinberg says “Tonally, it’s very different. Noah is a genius — he wrote and created and directed the pilot to ‘Legion’ — and it is a very different sensibility than anything we’ve done with the ‘X-Men’ movies. Almost, I would say, as radically different as ‘Deadpool’ was from the mainline ‘X-Men’ movies. ‘Legion’ is, again, in a different direction: really character-based, really granular in terms of getting inside the details of the characters. It stands as part of the ‘X-Men’ universe, but it stands apart from it as well.”

“Legion” will premiere in early 2017.