Fox and their Marvel creative consultant Mark Millar see The Wolverine as the beginning of their own version of Marvel Studios’ “Phase One”. And it doesn’t mean just the X-Men. Fox has the film rights to all the Marvel mutants and the intention is to expand past the X-Men. They went as far as comparing the upcoming film to Iron Man.

“I felt like Iron Man was really the beginning of something for the Marvel Studios movies, and The Wolverine will be a similar starting point to build a lot off of for the Fox movies … X-Force or Cable or Deadpool — all these amazing characters are things we haven’t really gotten to yet.”

–Mark Millar

Millar went on saying that it’s a possibility to have up to 10 or more films in the pipeline — and it’s sounding very promising with Deadpool being singled out during his interview. Ryan Reynolds and co. are most likely very excited by that. Though, it’ll still take a lot to convince the studio to go with the R-rating.

The shared movie universe will be a hard endeavor, especially since Fox went with basically standalone movies — aside from the X-Men property, but it’s still doable. Marvel Studios proved that a shared movie universe works; it’s inspiration for Fox, and something to try to outdo. It also doesn’t hurt that they have Hugh Jackman.

[Comic Book Resources]