Just a couple of days ago, we brought you the news when 20th Century Fox had announced (along with some other titles) the July 18th, 2014 release date for director Matthew Vaughn‘s highly anticipated follow-up to the 2011 blockbuster, X-Men: First Class.

Now, Ain’t It Cool News reports that 20th Century Fox has registered a copyright for the title Days of Future Past with the MPAA Title Registration Bureau, which exists so that studios can claim titles for future projects.

From the site –

To the average person, DAYS OF FUTURE PAST might not mean anything, but, if you’re an X-Men fan, you know this feeds directly into that neighborhood of the Marvel Universe.

DAYS OF FUTURE PAST was a two-issue story arc of the X-Men comics, published by Marvel in 1981, that dealt with alternative timelines. In an alternative future, mutants were incarcerated in internment camps. However, the Kitty Pryde of that time transfers her mind to the Kitty Pryde of now in order to prevent that from ever happening. The assassination of Senator Robert Kelly by the Brotherhood is what sets off this chain of events, and now with the X-Men made aware of the future, they must try to stop it from happening and… well, it’s almost like BACK TO THE FUTURE PART II, but with mutants.

This brings Sentinels into the mix, and this also brings forth that alternative future, which still exists on an alternative timeline as opposed to disappearing altogether. Could that be a potential link to the restart of the traditional X-MEN franchise, or the long-rumored X-MEN 4, which could be entirely rebooted without touching the original trilogy of films?

This could essentially be used to reboot the X-Men movie universe, without actually rebooting it, and negating everything that ever happened on Brett Ratner’s watch. I might have to give Fox credit for this brilliant idea… if it is in-fact what they plan to do.