Here's every unmade X-Men movie, and why they were canceled. Created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee in 1963, X-Men has gone on to become one of most popular Marvel properties of all time. Perhaps more than any other comic book characters, the mutant superheroes speak to the experiences of the marginalized and those find themselves prejudiced against by society, making them accessible to a wide variety of people. It's little surprise, then, the X-Men have proven successful in multiple mediums, including Fox's live-action film adaptations and the beloved X-Men cartoon series from the 1990s.
It was the live-action movies that helped usher in the modern era of superhero blockbusters and paved the way for the MCU, beginning with the first X-Men in 2000. The series continued to push the envelope for comic book adaptations from there with subsequent sequels, spinoffs, and even prequels, including the time-traveling crossover Days of Future Past in 2014. Fox's X-Men movies became particularly ambitious after that, with the Deadpool films and Logan breaking new ground when it comes to tone and genre. The upcoming (if perennially delayed) New Mutants was set to take them even further by opening the door into the realms of horror and psychological thriller territory.
Sadly, that's no longer happening: thanks to Disney's acquisition of Fox's movie and TV assets in 2019, the X-Men are now being absorbed into and likely rebooted for the MCU, leaving no small amount of developing Fox films to remain unmade. Of course, the House of Mouse isn't the only reason certain X-Men projects will never see the light of day. Here's a breakdown of every canceled mutant movie, and why they didn't happen.
Leader of the Brotherhood of Mutants and a powerful mutant in his own right, Magneto ranks high on the list of most popular X-Men and for good reason: not only does he have really cool powers (the ability to control and create magnetic fields), he also has an incredibly compelling backstory (being a Holocaust survivor), and his outlook on human and mutant relations (put simply, he doesn't trust humanity) is often more convincing than his counterpart Professor X's calls for peace. So, it only made sense Fox gave serious thought to making a solo Magneto film.
Titled X-Men Origins: Magneto, the movie would've been the second installment in a series of X-Men character prequels after X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Pitched as "The Pianist meets X-Men", Fox hired Sheldon Turner (Up in the Air) to write the script in 2004 before recruiting David S. Goyer to direct three years later. Most of the film would've focused on Magneto's experiences both during the Holocaust and in its immediate aftermath, as he sets out seeking revenge against the escaped Nazis who tortured him and killed his parents. The expectation was a 20-something actor would play Magneto for the majority of the movie. All the same, Ian McKellen expressed a desire to reprise his X-Men trilogy role in the film, either with CGI de-aging (a la The Last Stand) or via flash-forwards set in the present-day version of the X-Men universe.
The story for X-Men Origins: Magneto continued to change under Goyer's watch, moving up to the 1960s and focusing on a young Professor X and Magneto battling a common enemy. By 2009, though, Fox had started moving forward with a rival prequel in the form of X-Men: First Class, with X-Men helmer Bryan Singer attached to direct (prior to him departing and being replaced by Matthew Vaughn). Since the timelines for First Class and X-Men Origins: Magneto overlapped with one another, Fox ultimately decided to cancel the latter in favor of using the former as a way to soft reboot the larger X-Men franchise.
About a year before Marvel Studios changed the blockbuster game with The Avengers in 2012, Fox was quietly working on a Marvel superhero crossover event of their own. Speaking on Kevin Smith's Fatman Beyond podcast in 2019, X-Men: First Class co-writer Zack Stentz confirmed he and his writing partner at the time, Ashely Miller, wrote a script for a movie that would've used "all of the Marvel characters that Fox had at the time in 2011," including the X-Men, Daredevil, Deadpool, and Fantastic Four. The film even had The Bourne Supremacy and Bourne Ultimatum helmer Paul Greengrass attached to direct, which suggests it might've been very different, tonally, from any of the Fox-Marvel movies before it.
Once again, things didn't go as planned: Greengrass decided to take on a different project (presumably Captain Phillips, which hit theaters in 2013), so Fox shuffled the film to the back-burner while also pressing forward with Marvel movies like the Fantastic Four reboot (which Stentz and Miller also worked on, prior to Josh Trank coming aboard as director) and the First Class sequel, Days of Future Past. The studio's "secret" crossover was basically canceled after that, even before the rights to Daredevil reverted back to Marvel Studios in 2013.
There's no other X-Men movie that went through as many starts and stops before fizzling out as Fox's woebegone attempt to give the Ragin' Cajun his own spinoff. After a few failed tries, the debonair, card-chucking mutant (whose powers allow him to convert the potential energy in objects into destructive kinetic energy) finally made the jump to the big screen in 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine, with Taylor Kitch playing the role. The original idea was to use the Wolverine prequel as a springboard for additional spinoffs starring Deadpool and Gambit, but the film's poor reception led to Fox scrapping those plans.
However, much like the Deadpool movie would eventually be re-imagined (and, in that case, actually made), the Gambit film was later resurrected as a starring vehicle for Channing Tatum. The actor was exceptionally vocal about his enthusiasm for the project, saying it would allow him to tap into his Southern roots and even showing up at Fox's 2015 SDCC panel to promote his impending appearance. In the end, the movie just couldn't get a director to stick around, with Rupert Wyatt, Doug Liman, and Gore Verbinski all signing on before departing at a later date. Even Tatum toyed with the idea of calling the shots himself at one point.
Part of the problem was the Gambit script kept changing dramatically throughout pre-production: Wyatt described his vision for the film as "[The] Godfather with mutants set in the world of New Orleans," whereas X-Men producer and writer Simon Kinberg described a later iteration as being closer to a rom-com action movie along the lines of Mr. and Mrs. Smith (which he also wrote). Its budget was also reportedly slashed after the Fantastic Four reboot flopped in 2015, causing even more issues from a creative perspective. No surprise, after all those problems, Gambit was ultimately shelved when Disney finalized its purchase of Fox, and is highly unlikely to be revived in its previous form.
As much as Logan was a powerful sendoff for Hugh Jackman's version of Wolverine, it was also a breakout vehicle for Dafne Keen as Logan's clone/"daughter" Laura, aka. X-23, and left audiences wanting to see more of her take on the character. In October 2017, Logan director James Mangold confirmed he and Craig Kyle (who created X-23 in comic book form) were developing the treatment for a Laura spinoff featuring Keen, but with no promise of whether or not it would ever come to pass. The film was one of many X-Men projects to fall by the wayside after Disney bought Fox, though it's possible the X-23 character will be introduced to the MCU sooner, rather than later. She could even still be played by Keen again, much like J.K. Simmons is now reprising his role as J. Jonah Jameson from Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy for the MCU Spider-Man movies.
In an effort to keep up with the competition, Fox started developing multiple spinoffs that would serve to expand the X-Men franchise into a cinematic universe, prior to Disney's acquisition of their entertainment assets. Some of those projects were based on especially niche characters, including James Arthur Madrox, aka. Multiple Man, a mutant with the ability to create multiple duplicates of himself. James Franco was set to star in the film in November 2017, with the expectation being it would take the X-Men movies in a much weirder direction than they'd ever gone before (a la the X-Men inspired FX series Legion). Wonder Woman writer Allan Heinberg continued to work on the script on through to 2018, even after Franco was accused of sexually exploitive and inappropriate behavior while serving as an acting teacher near the start of the year. It's since been firmly canceled, though, as Disney and Marvel Studios prepare to hit the reset button on most things mutant-related.
After cameoing in X-Men 1 and 2 (where she was played by two different actors), Katherine Anne "Kitty" Pryde was finally granted a leading role in X-Men: The Last Stand, where she was portrayed by Ellen Page. The latter would reprise her role in Days of Future Past, but it was never clear if the idea was for Page to reprise the phasing mutant again in the Kitty Pryde spinoff movie Fox announced in January 2018, with Deadpool's Tim Miller directing. Comic book veteran Brian Michael Bendis was attached to write the script from the very beginning, and confirmed he was still working on it as recently as February 2019, in spite of the then un-finalized Disney-Fox deal. It's never going to happen now, of course: as Miller put it bluntly in a November 2019 interview, "I don't expect Marvel to call me and say, 'Come do the X-Men,' so I'm not waiting for that. I was really excited about my Kitty Pryde movie. F**k, I love that movie. It'll never happen now."
Filmmaker Drew Goddard (The Cabin in the Woods) hasn't had great luck when it comes to comic book movies. He originally stepped down as the showrunner on Marvel and Netflix's Daredevil series to go write and direct a Sinister Six film for Sony's Amazing Spider-Man universe, only for the project to be scrapped in its initial form. Goddard later boarded the X-Force movie in 2017, with the intention of writing and directing it after he finished making Bad Times at the El Royale. What he couldn't have foreseen was that Disney would begin its purchase of Fox later that year, and subsequently cancel the studio's many developing Marvel projects (or, at the very least, indefinitely postpone them).
An X-Force movie was already in development well before Goddard became involved (with Kick-Ass 2 director Jeff Wadlow working on an earlier iteration in 2013), but it was fully overhauled in the wake of Deadpool's success at the box office in 2016. According to Deadpool creator Rob Liefeld, Goddard's version of the mutant team-up film would've been particularly focused on Josh Brolin as Cable, following his introduction during Deadpool 2. For better or for worse, as with everything else X-Men related right now, it's unclear whether X-Force (or even Deadpool 3, for that matter) will come to pass anytime soon.
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