Director Bryan Singer is returning to the X-Men franchise this May with X-Men: Days of Future Past, and audiences are apparently quite eager to see what the superhero team-up has in store.  Essentially serving as Fox’s answer to Marvel’s The Avengers, the film combines the original X-Men cast with the X-Men: First Class crew and involves time-travel, alternate timelines, and Sentinels.  While many are certainly looking forward to the film, Singer already has his eye on the next movie, as he’s currently breaking the story on the DOFP follow-up X-Men: Apocalypse.

Singer is attached to direct the pic, and in the recent issue of Total Film, he talked a bit about the sequel, revealing that it takes place mostly in the 1980s, deals with the notion of ancient mutants, and will have “more mass destruction” than any X-Men film to date.  Hit the jump to read on and to check out a new gallery of images from Days of Future Past.

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Image via 20th Century Fox

Speaking with Total Film in the latest issue of the magazine (via CBM), Singer said X-Men: Apocalypse is progressing nicely in anticipation of the film’s May 27, 2016 release date:

“We’re currently breaking the story. We’re almost ready to go. Dan Harris, Michael Dougherty and Simon Kinberg are in the office across the street from me, working on story stuff right now. It’s great to have Dan and Michael back.”

Harris and Dougherty are, of course, the scribes behind X2 and Kinberg scripted Days of Future Past.  As for the time period of Apocalypse, Singer has previously said that he wants to delve into the idea of ancient mutants, but it will be contemporary feature focusing mainly on the First Class cast:

“We're going to deal with the notion of ancient mutants - the fact they were born and existed thousands of years ago. But it'll be a contemporary movie - well, it'll take place in the '80s... The '80s is a period now - it's hard for me to believe that!”

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Image via 20th Century Fox

The filmmaker also teased that the scope of the picture will be quite massive:

Apocalypse will have more of the mass destruction that X-Men films, to date, have not relied upon. There’s definitely now a character and a story that allow room for that kind of spectacle… I don’t want to get too specific, but we’ll introduce familiar characters in a younger time. That’ll be fun to show the audience. I call these movies in-between-quels. It’s a mind-fuck sometimes in terms of where things fall in the timeline!"

The director also said his desire to delve into the backstory of the original X-Men is what spurred his interest in these new X-Men films, saying there are more stories he’d like to tell beyond Apocalypse:

“Yeah, there actually are [more stories I want to tell]. It all stems back to when I did [the first] X-Men. You always want to know where a character’s going to go, what their future’s going be like. You can always sequelise. But on that film I also had actors asking ‘Who am I? Where did my character come from?’ So as a director you always need a backstory to give your actors. It may not be the right backstory, but it’s one you can give the actor to help them understand their character. These prequels are really exciting for me because they give me a chance to explore ideas I came up with more than a decade ago.”

Take a look at some new images from X-Men: Days of Future Past below, also courtesy of Total Film.  The pic opens in theaters on May 23rd.