We’ve now had two movies based on The Dark Phoenix Saga, with the most recent being this summer’s eponymous Dark Phoenix, which is the final entry in Fox’s X-Men franchise. Despite this, fans have been left unsatisfied with both adaptations and the recent film, in particular, was met with lukewarm-to-harsh reviews and incredibly poor earnings at the box office.
The storyline’s original writer, Marvel legend Chris Claremont, has now revealed his preferred way to bring the arc to the screen, though. While speaking with ComicBookMovie.com, he had some nice things to say about Simon Kinberg’s recent effort but admitted that the saga lends itself better to a TV series rather than a single movie.
“One of the things that Simon achieved in this film is he made you fall for her, he made you feel her pain as she goes through the yin and yang of “Oh my gosh I’ve got this great power. Oh my God, what have I done to Mystique?” She gets swept up in the passion as she gets seduced by the D’Bari. It’s a roller coaster, but being that it’s a feature film, it’s a very intense, but very short roller coaster and what I’d like to do – the reason I talk in terms of a TV series, for example – is I want to stretch it out. I want to prolong the commitment of the audience and the agony they feel.”
He has a point and we agree that a TV show would probably be the best medium to adapt the story in. After all, neither of Fox’s cinematic efforts came close to replicating the full arc that Claremont wrote on the page. For instance, all the material of Jean being corrupted by Mastermind and the Hellfire Club and then the X-Men’s battle with the Shi’ar in space hasn’t featured in either version.
Thankfully, then, a Dark Phoenix miniseries doesn’t seem out of the question, as Marvel looks to be supplying Disney Plus with an endless stream of MCU shows over the coming years. And the studio is confirmed to be relaunching the X-Men within the next decade. That being said, it doesn’t seem likely that Marvel would be in a hurry to tackle this storyline again when it’s now so familiar to viewers, comic book readers or otherwise.
Tell us, though, would you like to see a Dark Phoenix TV series later down the line? Have your say, X-Men fans, in the comments section down below.