The Marvel Comics adaptation X-Force has been in development at 20th Century Fox since at least as far back as 2013, years before Deadpool finally proved that X-Men spin-offs could be a success.

But what exactly is X-Force? Well, as you've already guessed, it's an X-Men spin-off – a team of young mutants who tend to resort to more violent and underhand methods to get things done.

The groundwork for this movie will be put in place in Deadpool 2, which will arrive this summer. Here's what you need to know about what will follow.

X-Force movie release date

Fox is yet to announce X-Force's release date. The latest reports claim that the movie will begin shooting in October 2018.

The same report claims that three X-Men films will be released in 2019, and the speculation is that X-Force will be one of those.

X-Force movie cast

Ryan Reynolds is confirmed to star as Wade Wilson – that's Deadpool to you – in the movie.

Cable (Josh Brolin) is returning after his Deadpool 2 debut – he's a militaristic, time-travelling mutant cyborg, in case you aren't familiar.

The first trailer for Deadpool 2 also revealed that a group that looks a lot like an X-Force iteration (with a bit of the terribly named mercenary group Six Pack thrown in for good measure) will be making an appearance in that movie.

It's only an educated guess at this point, but the team appears to consist of GW Bridge (played by Terry Crews), Shatterstar (theorised to be Lewis Tan), and perhaps Garrison Kane.

Domino is also there, who is played by Zazie Beetz. Domino is another character with a long history with X-Force, so it would make sense for her to be returning in the movie. She has 'luck powers' that alter probability, which come in pretty handy when it says 'soldier of fortune' at the top of your CV.

The film was originally announced in 2013 with Kick-Ass 2 director Jeff Wadlow on board. At some point he dropped off the film and it is now being directed by Cabin in the Woods and Daredevil's Drew Goddard.

X-Force movie team members

So we have Cable and Domino, who were members of the team in its comic-book inception back in 1991. Deadpool was actually a much later addition, but his history is still caught up with the team and Cable in particular.

Other founding members of X-Force include Boom Boom (a mutant with explosive powers), Cannonball (who can fly and will appear in The New Mutants played by Charlie Heaton), the aforementioned Shatterstar (a bisexual genetically engineered warrior), Feral (a savage, cat-like mutant) and Warpath (a Native American fighter with super strength).

X-Force has been through so many iterations that Goddard could conceivably include almost any X-Men-related character he likes. Other prominent members you may have heard of include Psylocke, Archangel and some guy called Wolverine (who, with Hugh Jackman's recent departure in Logan, probably won't show up in the X-Force film – sorry about that).

X-Force movie plot

The X-Force team was originally introduced as an evolution of the aforementioned New Mutants team (only more GRITTY and BRUTAL, which were the watchwords of early-'90s comics). The decision to make the New Mutants movie a horror-themed teens-in-an-asylum story suggests to us that those characters (including classic X-Force members Sunspot and Cannonball) won't immediately graduate to a superhero team with the wisecracking Wade.

Our bet is that it will mainly focus on the characters introduced in Deadpool 2. So that's a team with Cable and Domino on it, certainly, and perhaps Shatterstar, Bridge, and whoever else turns out to be part of that team we saw in the trailer. Perhaps Teenage Negasonic Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand) and Colossus (Stefan Kapičić) will defect from the X-Men to Deadpool's team too.

Maybe even Morena Baccarin's Vanessa will get a look in, if Fox decides to finally give her some powers (she is based on the shapeshifting Marvel Comics character Copycat, another mutant with X-Force links).

In terms of the specific plot of the movie, it's obviously way too early to predict. We expect that they'll lean on the black-ops/assassins aspect of X-Force's history, no doubt with plenty of Deadpool-style hijinks thrown in.

In terms of villains, they have their pick of pretty much any X-Men foe you like. Antagonists with a particularly close link to X-Force include Stryfe (a clone of Cable), Selene (an immortal witch) and Gideon (another immortal who can duplicate other people's superpowers).