Exclusive: Simon Kinberg on Dark Phoenix as a limited series

We speak with Dark Phoenix filmmaker Simon Kinberg about condensing Jean Grey’s saga and if it would make for a great series.

Jean Grey is undoubtedly one of the X-Men’s most complex and influential members. Under Professor Xavier’s wing, she evolved into an omega-level telepath and telekinetic. Surpassing Professor X in select regards, Jean eventually becomes a host of the Phoenix Force, “an immortal, indestructible, and mutable manifestation of the prime universal force of life.” (via MarvelFandom) Jean’s journey is challenging to capture in one movie, but Simon Kinberg’s 2019 X-Men film, Dark Phoenix, was an exciting display of the character’s struggle and power. Speaking with Kinberg, whose latest project includes being Apple TV’s Invasion‘s creator and executive producer, we asked about Dark Phoenix and if the story could have been a great series.

JoBlo: I would’ve thought that (Dark Phoenix) could’ve been great to do as a limited series, or like a six-episode series, or a ten-episode series, right?

Kinberg: Yeah, there’s certainly a bunch of things that I’ve worked on that I think would make for a cool series. The idea of doing Dark Phoenix as a series is fascinating because what I felt in constructing the movie, and even initially when writing the movie, was that it required more than one movie to tell that story.

I think to do it in a way that was really loyal to the comic is to make it as intergalactic as the book and to really get into the Hellfire Club. There’s so many different aspects of the story, right? They have to be excised when you’re telling a two-hour version of it. But, the idea of doing a four-hour, if it were two movies or doing an eight-hour limited series or 10 hours, would really allow you to get into all of the different elements of the original book and original run. But yeah, you know, these days, when I think about a story, I don’t immediately think, “Oh, this is a movie.” I think about it like, oh, this is a cool story. This is an interesting character. What’s the best way to tell it?

Do you think Dark Phoenix would work better as a series? Indeed, Jean’s journey from X-Man to a world-devouring cosmic force of destruction is labyrinthine enough to warrant more time to tell the story. With Marvel Studios planning to reboot the X-Men in a few years, they may likely revisit the Phoenix Saga in an episodic format on Disney+.

Kinberg and David Weil’s Invasion recently launched its second season on Apple TV+, continuing the series about different perspectives of alien invasion from around the globe.