Last month 20th Century Fox announced that it has finally given the go-ahead to Deadpool, director Tim Miller’s long-gestating solo movie for the Merc with the Mouth, which is set to hit theaters in February 2016. Obviously Deadpool will skip over the events of Deadpool’s last outing in the retconned-out-of-existence X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but X-Men: Days of Future Past writer-producer Simon Kinberg has confirmed that it will still be part of the studio’s wider X-Men universe.

“There’s definitely a sort of overall plan that we’ve all been talking about for the X-Men universe now and Deadpool obviously fits into that,” Kinberg tells ComicBook. “So yeah, I guess I would say it’s part of certainly an overall timeline and thought process that goes into these films, some of which is inspired by the comics and some which is inspired by seeing what Marvel’s done with telling a larger tapestry and linking all those movies together, even as they stand independently as well. The same kind of thought is going to go into these X-Men movies at Fox.”

So, I guess that paves the way for Deadpool to feature as part of the X-Force movie that is / was under development, which has Jeff Wadlow penning the screenplay.