X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

• Add

Production

Original Story

Before the release of X2: X-Men United, the creative team behind the X-Men franchise--director Bryan Singer and his co-writers Dan Harris and Michael Dougherty--had already wrote a screenplay for a third movie in the series. This movie would be almost exclusively based on "The Dark Phoenix Saga," a story arc written in the late 70s by Chris Claremont. The primary antagonist would be Emma Frost and her Hellfire Club; Singer was considering Sigourney Weaver for the role of Frost. The story would deal with Jean Grey's insanity and loss of control over her powers and would feature a climax where Grey would kill herself but then would be reborn as a ultra-powerful entity in a scenario Singer himself compared to 2001: A Space Odyssey. This last bit was loosely based on a few story arcs published in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s.

Superman Assaults X-Men!

Warner Bros. approached Bryan Singer and requested he join them for a movie based on the Superman character. It had been over a decade since the last movie and despite his popularity and frequent efforts by Warner Bros. there had been no progress. In fact, Tim Burton, Brett Ratner, and McG had all been attached to direct but had each dropped out because of difficulties with the studio. Singer had made a successful and critically-acclaimed adaptation of a less popular comic book series that had also been through development hell, so he seemed like a good fit.

Singer, frustrated with 20th Century Fox (the distributors of the X-Men movies), broke off his contract and went to Warner Bros (he did end up making a Superman movie: 2006's Superman Returns). With him, he brought the franchise's writers--Dan Harris and Michael Dougherty--as well as James Marsden (Cyclops) and cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel. With most of the actors jumping ship, Alan Cumming, who played Nightcrawler, left as well.

New Creative Team

Fox scrambled for a new creative team as they did not want to lose the popularity the franchise had. Zak Penn, who had been a writer on X2 but hadn't left with singer, agreed to stay and work on a sequel. The studio also brought in Simon Kinberg, who's most famous work prior to this movie was Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

For director, Hugh Jackman, the franchise star, recommended Darren Aronofsky, but this didn't happen (though years later Jackman eventually got the studio to briefly sign Aronofsky on for a spin-off movie, The Wolverine). The studio approached Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer as well as a prolific writer of the X-Men comics. Whedon declined because he was working on a Wonder Woman movie for Warner Bros.

Fox considered Rob Bowman and Alex Proyas, but decided to next approach Zack Snyder. Snyder was busy making 300 and was unable to take the job. Fox then tried Peter Berg, but he declined as well. The studio then got Matthew Vaughn signed on to the project. However, a bit into production Vaughn got frustrated by the rushed production schedule and quit (he would later return to the franchise for X-Men: First Class).

Now far behind where they hoped to be and with everyone leaving, Fox searched for a director they knew was able to make successful movies in very short periods of time with a rushed schedule. The person they arrived at was Brett Ratner, who had actually been a finalist to direct the original X-Men movie but was beaten by the more-experienced Singer. Not to long ago Ratner had left Warner Bros. where he was making a Superman movie but was unable to continue due to studio difficulties.

Thus, after a ridiculous amount of shuffling, the Superman director ended up quitting and going to work on X-Men while the X-Men director ended up quitting and going to work on Superman.