FOX Hires Simon Kinberg To Shepherd Their Marvel Properties

The Hollywood Reporter tells us that Fox has signed a three-year, first look deal with Simon Kinberg and his Genre Films company with an eye on Kinberg developing Fox’s Marvel properties into a shared universe.

Kinberg already has a credit as producer and writer on X-Men: Days of Future Past and the Fantastic Four reboot.

The news outlet reached Kinberg for a comment on his new role:

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.

You have to appreciate Kinberg’s candor, but he really wasn’t telling us anything we didn’t know. You can draw a straight line between Disney hiring Joss Whedon to be the creative consultant on their Marvel Film Universe to Warners signing a similar first look deal with David Goyer to aid in his overseeing their DC Comics film slate to this deal here. So the “Be Like Marvel” thing is fairly obvious.

Kinberg’s plan to build stories over multiple movies might start immediately as next year’s X-Men: Days of Future Past is rumored to lead directly into 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse. And the connection between the films might be more direct and more involved than any of Marvel’s offerings have been to date.

One does have to ask where Mark Millar stands in all of this. The comic scribe was hired on by Fox last year to do the exact same thing Kinberg is charged with. Will the pair be working together, or has Millar been replaced?