2016 has the potential to be a banner year for the X-Men franchise in film, with three movies on the way in the franchise for the first time ever. Deadpool kicks things off in February, followed by ensemble film X-Men: Apocalypse and finally another solo film, Gambit. During a press tour for Kill Your Friends, Nicholas Hoult, who plays Henry "The Beast" McCoy for the third time in Apocalypse, talked a bit with MTV about how those two solo films might integrate into the larger universe.

"That's kind of the way all those superhero movies are going at the moment, isn't it? They're kind of getting bigger and bigger, and merging all those characters together," Hoult said. "Tonally, I think Deadpool's very different from the X-Men world. That's why they're going R-rated, and I'm excited with what they're doing with that. So who knows if they could ever merge and keep the integrity of the character for him?"

As for Gambit, Hoult evoked the 1990s X-Men: The Animated Series to express his excitement for the Ragin' Cajun, while also keeping things 100 with his own character..

"I used to watch the animated series, where Gambit and Beast were always my favorite characters!" he told the reporter. "So I'm looking forward to seeing the Gambit movie as well."

For their part, the writers of Deadpool have already spoken up about integrating the character more into the X-Men ensemble films, saying that's a big reason why Colossus is in the first movie. They hope to do a second stand-alone sequel before putting him directly with a team (likely X-Force as in the comics) in earnest.

See when all the upcoming X-Men movies hit theaters on our full franchise movie schedule.