The slate of planned X-Men movies finally seems to have sorted itself into some kind of order. Wolverine 2 is very much high on the agenda, as you might expect, and Bryan Singer has now signed on to direct X-Men: First Class. The existence of the latter is set to mean the end of the planned X-Men Origins: Magneto movie too, which is a shame, but hardly a surprise.

Also on the Fox to-do list though is X-Men: Deadpool, the spin-off from the Wolverine movie featuring Ryan Reynolds in the title role. And that project has taken a small step forward with the hiring of Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick to write the script. This had been rumoured for a little while now, but formal confirmation has now been forthcoming, via Slashfilm.

And this is good news, for Reese and Wernick are the pair behind the screenplay to last year's very funny Zombieland. There's no rush on them to get it finished it would seem, though, given that Reynolds is hard at work on Green Lantern right now. We'd also suspect that Deadpool is third in line behind Wolverine 2 and First Class in the X-Men queue at the moment, and that's perhaps one reason why Fox hasn't been talking about either a release date or shooting schedule.

But still, this does bode well for the project, and it looks a smart choice of writers for the film from where we're sitting.

Slashfilm