While our short attention spans may disagree, Jennifer Lawrence is actually a big part of two different franchises. While everyone is looking at her now thanks to the ridiculous success of The Hunger Games, she also starred as Mystique in Matthew Vaughn's excellent X-Men: First Class. Naturally, both movies are going to have to work together so that their schedules don't collide and considering both have sequels in development now is the time to figure when each one is going to shoot. It looks like that mystery has been solved.
THR is reporting that the still-untitled sequel to X-Men: First Class will shoot in January as to avoid the production of Catching Fire, the Hunger Games sequel. What's interesting is that this wasn't an easy agreement for 20th Century Fox and Lionsgate, the studios behind the respective films. For a while Fox was threatening to start in between August-September, which ran right into Lionsgate's plans. Fox has an option on Lawrence's contract saying that she has to do the X-Men sequel no matter what, even if it does conflict with another movie (which she is the actual star of). Lucky for her and us, they won't intersect.
It's great to hear so much forward progress on the X-Men sequel. There's was a time when the project wasn't a sure thing, but considering how awesome the first movie was it would have been terrible not to have a follow-up - mostly because it sets itself up for one. The sequel has Vaughn back in the director's chair, the script is being written by Simon Kinberg and we can likely expect the movie to be released in 2014, if not late 2013.
