James Franco’s X-Men spinoff will be a ‘hard R’ in the vein of Logan, Deadpool

Actor James Franco affirms he’s working with longtime X-Men producer Simon Kinberg on an “X-Men property” that will reflect newer, adult-oriented superhero movies like Deadpool and Logan.

Franco told The Hollywood Reporter that he couldn’t divulge too much information about the role, but reiterated that Kinberg was involved with the project and that the direction of the movie would encroach upon a “new ground” of superhero storytelling. Franco added he wanted the movie to push boundaries, but still be entertaining for original fans of the character.

“What I love about what Simon Kinberg and Fox and the X-Men people have done with Deadpool and Logan — it took a while to get there, maybe 10 years — but they are going to go hard R,” Franco said. “And we’re going to take this superhero thing and really just push it into a new genre.”

Previous reports suggested that Franco will step into the role of Jamie Madrox, better known by his superhero pseudonym, Multiple Man. Nowhere near as popular as Wolverine or Storm, Multiple Man still managed to grace the big screen with a brief appearance in the 2006 X-Men movie, X-Men: The Last Stand.

Multiple Man is a mutant who can conjure up numerous, controllable clones of himself. The character made his first appearance in Giant-Size Fantastic Four #4, which was published in 1975. Multiple Man was introduced as a baddie following a cloning incident, in which one of his unmanageable clones drove Madrox mad. It took Professor Xavier and Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four to figure out a way Madrox could control his cloning abilities.

The screenplay for Fox’s stand-alone Multiple Man movie is being written by Wonder Woman scribe Allan Heinberg. The film does not have an estimated release window, but Fox has a number of other superhero projects in development, including Deadpool 2 and Gambit.