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Tuesday, November 10
Brett Ratner is tired of defending his directorial work in X-Men: The Last Stand, but fans continue to wonder what might have been if Bryan Singer had finished his X-Men trilogy, instead of defecting to Superman Returns. Michael Dougherty, the screenwriter for X2: X-Men United who joined Singer's defection, explained his ideas for X3 to Slashfilm in a recent podcast (transcribed by TheGeekFiles).
You found out was that Phoenix [(Famke Janssen)] was going round the world taking things into her own hands and that she had basically returned as a god, which they did in X3. She had viewed herself as above the conflict, that she was here to end things on her terms, she was sick of the fighting andshe was going to take things into her own hands and she did not give a s**t what the X-Men or the Brotherhood had to say about it.
And ultimately the way it was going to end, at least the version I was pushing for ... she kind of becomes that cosmic force that Phoenix is known to be, she leaves Earth and becomes a god, or at least a higher level of intelligence, and she goes into the cosmos possibly to kick-start life somewhere else. The final scene for me would have been her telling Cyclops [(James Marsden)] or her telling the X-Men "I'll be watching."
Dougherty also planned a different outcome for Rogue (Anna Paquin).
The whole point of Rogue's character is that she is supposed to come to terms with who she is and also I don't think it's good to tell girls "Yeah you should change yourselves so you can get a guy."
Instead The Last Stand saw Rogue lose her powers, Cyclops die, and Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) kill Phoenix, all to the disappointment of the fans.
You can check out the entire podcast here.
Posted 11/10/2009 by Ryan
Related: Anna Paquin | Bryan Singer | Famke Janssen | Hugh Jackman | James Marsden | X-Men: The Last Stand | Michael Dougherty | X2: X-Men United
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Thursday, October 15
Fans of the X-Men are familiar with the evolution of the trilogy: X-Men was good, X2: X-Men United was terrific, and X-Men: The Last Stand just plain sucked. Last Stand's director, Brett Ratner, has heard all the criticism and is sick of it.
You can't make these people happy. I'm kind of the anti-Christ to these comic book geeks. Every single person that wrote s**t went to see that movie multiple times because a movie doesn't gross $200 something million unless people go to see it more than once. Every single person who said, "I'm never seeing that movie," they were the first ones there.
Calling the fan base of your movie "geeks" isn't the most courteous of expressions, but his frustration is somewhat understandable since Last Stand did make $234 million in the U.S. alone and, ultimately, $460 million worldwide. It also cost $210 million to make, so it's not as impressive a profit margin as Ratner would have readers believe. If box office is the sole measure of a movie's success or failure, X2 was more profitable, with Last Stand barely surpassing The X-Men. Not that it matters to Ratner, who still considers his effort a triumph.
If I buried the franchise how the f**k did they make a Wolverine? I mean, that's ridiculous. And they're making three other f**king X-Men movies. Mine kept the franchise alive!
X-Men "geeks" will likely disagree with that statement, and could point out that the success of X-Men Origins: Wolverine is keeping the franchise alive. Also, it might be mentioned that Fox has to continue to developing X-Men movies or else the rights revert back to Marvel Entertainment.
Posted 10/15/2009 by Ryan
Related: Brett Ratner | X-Men: The Last Stand | X-Men | X2: X-Men United | X-Men Origins: Wolverine
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Thursday, October 8
With the sheer number of X-Men movies currently in some state of production — X-Men: First Class, Deadpool, X-Men Origins: Magneto, Wolverine 2, and possibly even X-Men 4 — it's no wonder that Rebecca Romijn wants her own spin-off. Romijn told Showbizspy that she'd be ready to get back into the blue makeup of her X-Men character Mystique in, say, a year or so.
If they talk to me in a year when I have worked off more of the baby weight, we'll see, but I've still got a couple of pounds to go. It's a great idea but no one's talked to me about it yet.
Romijn recently had twins with husband Jerry O'Connell and admits she isn't "back to the shape I was in beforehand," but with all the X-Men movies potentially being made, Romijn may have plenty of time before Mystique is asked to return.
What do you think? Would you like a Mystique spin-off? Let us know in the comments section.
Posted 10/8/2009 by Ryan
Related: Rebecca Romijn-Stamos | X-Men: The Last Stand | X-Men | X2: X-Men United
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Friday, June 26
Marvel Entertainment seems to be on a good run after the success of Iron Man, with production moving along on the sequel Iron Man 2, as well as Thor and The First Avenger: Captain America. All those movies will tie together in 2012's The Avengers, in what is projected to be the start of a huge blockbuster franchise. No one is more aware of the expectations on The Avengers than its screenwriter, Zak Penn, who warned the crowd attending a Los Angeles Film Festival panel:
It's hard to make a good movie. We all have the best intentions, and it still might suck.
Penn is no stranger to writing ensemble superhero movies, having penned X2: X-Men united and X-Men: The Last Stand, but making several movies fit together into one is a challenge:
I'm taking a meeting next week with the Thor and Captain America people, and we are all going to get together, and I will see what is going to happen. I'll see where they are leaving the characters; it's pretty complicated.... There's a board that is tracking what is happening. [We'll see] how this movie overlaps in that movie...
What gives Penn confidence, however, is working for Marvel, who is making the Avengers movies with its own production studio:
Marvel is autonomous now. It is night and day: Everyone has read every comic. They know how to make a cool movie.
Next Showing: The Avengers opens May 4, 2012
Posted 6/26/2009 by Ryan
Related: X-Men: The Last Stand | X2: X-Men United | Iron Man | Thor | Iron Man 2 | First Avenger: Captain America | The Avengers
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Tuesday, June 2
X-Men trilogy actor Shawn Ashmore has already stated that he thinks a X-Men 4 is impossible, however with the success of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, a renewed interest in the X-Men franchise has surfaced, particularly from X-Men / X2: X-Men United director Bryan Singer, who left X-Men: The Last Stand to direct Superman Returns but told Britain's Total Film Magazine that he regrets the decision:
It's weird for me to watch [X-Men: The Last Stand], because I'm so close to the universe. I'm eternally intertwined with X-Men now. What takes an audience four hours to watch -- the first two movies -- took six years of my life. So, to not be part of it ... It's a shame.
Singer went on to say that he may be interested in another prequel, namely X-Men Origins: Magneto:
Possibly. The only thing that concerns me about Magneto is that if the prequel were to follow the track I used in X-Men, which is Magneto's history in the concentration camp, then I've lived in that world. Apt Pupil, X-Men and now Valkyrie ... I've lived in that Nazi universe for quite a while. I just might need to take a little breakbefore I do something like that.
If Magneto is a little too much, there's always X-Men 4. Ashmore wouldn't complain. Neither would Wolverine producer Lauren Shuler Donner who has mentioned that she would love for Singer to return and direct almost any X-Men movie.
Posted 6/2/2009 by Ryan
Related: Bryan Singer | Lauren Shuler Donner | Shawn Ashmore | Apt Pupil | X-Men: The Last Stand | X-Men | X2: X-Men United | X-Men Origins: Wolverine | Valkyrie | X-Men Origins: Magneto
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Wednesday, May 6
Kevin Feige, President of Production at Marvel Studios, told Empire some updates regarding the adaptation of Thor and Avengers. First, he talked about Thor:
We will probably be having cast announcements in the next month or so on Thor. We're looking to cast Loki and Odin soon, and the main female role. And we'll also hopefully have lockdown shortly, gearing towards the beginning of production, which will be early next year. So I think there will be a lot of announcements between now and then.
Director Kenneth Branagh has already confirmed that shooting was to begin in January of next year. As for casting rumors, Josh Hartnett has been mentioned as the front-runner for Loki, and Natalie Portman the female lead, likely Thor's wife Sif. Looks like fans will know for sure sometime next month.
Feige also updated Branagh's pre-production:
Branagh's here, we're prepping, and he's put together some spectacular animatics already for our first action scene. We're digging into the second and third now, and we are just embarking on a rewrite of the draft.
As for The Avengers:
Zak Penn [X2: X-Men United and The Incredible Hulk writer] is already on board The Avengers [as screenwriter] and he's spending a lot of his time looking into what we're doing with Iron Man [2], Thor andCaptain America, seeing how we're tying it all together. And he's beginning to outline the script now -- he'll be doing that over the summer.
Feige offered no update as to whether Jon Favreau will direct The Avengers. Thor opens June 17, 2011, while The Avengers opens May 4, 2012.
Posted 5/6/2009 by Ryan
Related: Jon Favreau | Josh Hartnett | Kevin Feige | Natalie Portman | Zak Penn | X2: X-Men United | Kenneth Branagh | Thor | The Incredible Hulk | Iron Man 2 | First Avenger: Captain America | The Avengers
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Monday, May 4
After X-Men Origins: Wolverine's huge opening weekend, it's no surprise that Hugh Jackman's co-stars from the original X-Men trilogy would like to follow in Jackman's footsteps. Halle Berry told WENN would like her character Storm to have her own X-Men Origins movie:
I think that would be great. Storm deserves her own movie -- if I can still fit into the suit.
Shawn Ashmore, Iceman in the X-Men movies, told SciFiWire that he is "contracted" for another X-Men and would "absolutely love to play that character again." However, Ashmore hopes to break into one of the X-Men Origins movies since he doesn't believe X-Men 4 will ever happen:
As far as an X4, that's been debated and talked about forever. I don't think an X-Men 4 will happen, and that's my opinion. That's not anything I've heard from anybody official. I just know how tough it was to get everybody together scheduling-wise for [X-Men: The Last Stand]. There's just so many major actors involved. I think that's just such a challenge.
Ashmore feels there's little chance for Iceman in X-Men: First Class as well:
I heard rumors about a young-X-Men movie, and then I heard it was going to be something taking place in the past. So even though Iceman and Bobby Drake are a big part storyline-wise, the way that they set up that character in the series, he's much younger than the other characters. I'm just not sure how realistic that would be. Clearly I'm getting older, so if they were to do that, I'm sure that they would cast a younger actor.
If Wolverine keeps up its tremendous success, Fox will likely make any and all X-Men related movies.
Posted 5/4/2009 by Ryan
Related: Halle Berry | Hugh Jackman | Shawn Ashmore | X-Men: The Last Stand | X-Men | X2: X-Men United | X-Men Origins: Wolverine
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Monday, April 27
Only the most jaded moviegoer wouldn't be impressed by the physical transformation Hugh Jackman underwent to portray Logan/Wolverine in the upcoming X-Men Origins: Wolverine film. Rising at four in the morning day-in-and-day-out for months on end to harden his 40-year-old body to portray our favorite feral Canadian is the kind of dedication that only the most talented method actors have accomplished, putting him in a class with actors like Daniel Day Lewis (My Left Foot), Christian Bale (The Machinist), and Robert De Niro (Raging Bull).
In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Jackman credited De Niro's performance in another body-altering film as inspiration for his work on Origins. Jackman said:
I wanted to look like De Niro did when he took off his shirt in Cape Fear and everyone went, "Whoa." You realized the guy was a freak.
Of course, bulging biceps and angry screams aren't quite enough to sell a movie (any of the last dozen Van Damme movies are proof of that), or to keep the interest of an actor as talented and in-demand as Jackman:
Wolverine's fun and cool, but I wouldn't be down for my fourth time doing it if there wasn't something more interesting to it than just slicing and dicing and smoking a cigar and saying a few cool lines.
Despite the recent leak of an unfinished copy of the film on the Internet, X-Men Origins: Wolverine is expected to be a major hit, helping to kick off the summer blockbuster season.
Posted 4/27/2009 by BrentJS
Related: Hugh Jackman | X-Men: The Last Stand | X-Men | X2: X-Men United
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Saturday, April 18
What a difference a million downloads make! With several X-Men related projects on hold until the box office receipts for X-Men Origins: Wolverine can be counted post its May 1 release, X-Men Trilogy and Wolverine producer Lauren Shuler Donner is already discussing more prequels despite the recent Wolverine Internet leak. Shuler Donner told Fox Movie Channel's Life After Film School that X-Men Origins: Magneto is still in development, but offered new details about the other prequel, X-Men: First Class:
It is the first class of Xavier's school, way back when, so it's youngScott, young Jean, young Beast and that'll be really fun. I think (theplan) is to follow some of the characters into their own stories, andweave them back into the X-Men world. HopefullyFirst Class will become its own franchise and we can follow them asthey grow up.
With the X-Men movie world becoming so prequel-y, what about a sequel? X2: X-Men United actor Alan Cumming has said he would like to return as Nightcrawler in future X-Men movies, although nothing has been planned. Cumming told WENN:
Nobody’s said anything about it, but it might be quite fun to go back. I was supposed to do it again and they didn’t pick up my option for a third one. It was sort of ‘superhero interruptus’.
But with so many prequels getting made, it seems like only a matter of time (and money from the box office) before fans will get to see a X-Men 4.
Posted 4/18/2009 by Ryan
Related: Alan Cumming | Lauren Shuler Donner | X2: X-Men United | X-Men Origins: Wolverine | X-Men Origins: Magneto | X-Men: First Class
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Friday, April 17
When it comes to movies based on comic books, fans of the original source material are typically the most critical audience and have been very vocal about errors or perceived "continuity flaws" in the adapted works in the past. Gavin Hood, director of the upcoming X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie from 20th Century Fox, was all-too-aware of this going into the project. To the delight of fans, the comic books that provided inspiration for the film are two of the most acclaimed stories in Marvel Comics' Wolverine mythos. In a recent interview with Wizard magazine, Hood director said:
The two [comics] that most inform our movie are the Origin story and the Weapon X [story]. But I think we [could have spent] and entire movie just on that first Origin series, so I think that it would be fair to say that our movie's inspired by those two series rather than absolutely true to them.
When dealing with a character that has lived an exceedingly long life, the healthy use of flashback sequences is essential. When asked what criteria was used to select the important moments in Wolverine's development, Hood said:
We needed to move [Wolverine] through from about 1860 when he's born as James Howlett through the late '70s, early '80s, when our story principally takes place. So it's certainly not an endless "Logan Through Time" story by no means. We had a story set in the not too distant past...so the bulk of our story...happens between him and his brother and Striker. But we do meet him in the original moment of getting his claws, which I thought was exciting.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine stars Hugh Jackman as Logan/Wolverine, Liev Schreiber as Victor Creed/Sabretooth, Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson/Deadpool and Taylor Kitsch as Remy LeBeau/Gambit.
Next Showing: X-Men Origins: Wolverine opens May 1
Posted 4/17/2009 by BrentJS
Related: Hugh Jackman | X-Men: The Last Stand | X-Men | X2: X-Men United | Gavin Hood