When that character and the X-Force appeared, they took the comic world by storm. You have to look at those numbers. And you see that that isn't Rob Liefeld's only creation. There's all these other things, like Cable and Domino. There's so many things that actually could be fascinating onscreen and unlike anything you've ever seen before onscreen. So I think Fox is in a really nice position where they've got something that feels as wide and different as the Marvel Universe.

He [Stuart Immonen] and I have known each other over email for 18, 19 years or something, so to finally work with him is like kissing the girl that you always wanted to kiss.

I think most people know the concept of difficult family situations. So I try to just ground a very big concept in something we can all relate to on some level.

It's been a very interesting exercise as a writer - writing a little family group, like The Incredibles or The Simpsons or something like that, and setting it in a big Star Wars-type setting. It's been really fun, definitely different from the kind of thing I normally do.

The big thing is it's a domestic drama. Everything else in science fiction tends to be high-concept. Really for the last 40 years or so I think sci-fi's been a little cold and a little inhuman quite often - certainly since the 1980s - and I really wanted to do something that almost felt like a regular, real-life drama but just set it in a sci-fi setting. I think the best stuff is always like that.

I don't know, maybe it's just timely, or maybe it's the fact that I live in a house with four women, but I just find my thoughts kind of skewing that direction at the moment.

I spent as much time writing proposals in '98 and '99 as I did writing scripts.