Simon Kinberg regrets how Dark Phoenix was handled in X-Men: The Last Stand

Simon Kinberg, director of the upcoming film, X-Men: Dark Phoenix, feels X-Men: The Last Stand could have given a more wholesome treatment to the story of telepathic and telekinetic mutant, Jean Grey/Dark Phoenix. Kinberg, who served as the writer for the 2006 film, said, "I really feel that one of the mistakes we made with X-Men 3, was that we didn't go cosmic with it, like the comics."

He added the new film is an opportunity to redo the story at a time when the comic book superhero genre is undergoing an evolution. "I think that was a time in superhero movies where that just wasn't being done, and now we live in a time with Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor: Ragnarok, and so many comic book movies which are interstellar and cosmic. So we felt like this was an opportunity to do our version of that."

Famke Janssen has starred as Jean Grey in four X-Men films and Sophie Turner took over the role in 2016's X-Men: Apocalypse as the mutant's younger version. The Game of Thrones star reprises the role in the upcoming Dark Phoenix film, which marks Kinberg's directorial debut. 

The filmmaker described Dark Phoenix as "a much more grounded, naturalistic and organic version" of the story. "But nevertheless it has an alien character, a cosmic force and sequences in space," he teased of Jessica Chastain's character, who manipulates Jean Grey. It marks Chastain's entry into Disney-Marvel's mutant superhero universe. The film, also starring James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult and Tye Sheridan, is scheduled for release in the US on June 7.