Having relaunched the franchise with a younger cast in 2011’s X-Men: First Class, director Matthew Vaughn was originally announced as returning to the director’s chair for X-Men: Days of Future Past, only to exit the project in favour of Kingsman: The Secret Service.
Speaking to Coming Soon, Vaughn has explained his exit from the franchise, as well as revealing his initial vision for a trilogy of films which would have included a Wolverine solo movie building to Days of Future Past.
“That’s one of the reasons I didn’t continue, because they didn’t listen to me,” said Vaughn. “My plan was First Class, then second film was new young Wolverine in the 1970s to continue those characters, my version of the X-Men. So you’d really get to know all of them, and my finale was gonna be Days of Future Past. That was gonna be my number three where you bring them all… because what’s bigger than bringing in McKellen and Michael and Stewart and James and bringing them all together?”
“When I finished the Days of Future Past script with it ready to go I looked at it and said, ‘I really think it would be fun to cast Tom Hardy or someone as the young Wolverine and then bring it all together at the end,'” he continued. “Fox read Days of Future Past and went ‘Oh, this is too good! We’re doing it now!’ And I said, ‘Well what do you do next? Trust me you’ve got nowhere to go.’ Then they did Apocalypse and it’s like… If you flip that ’round even it would have been better. Hollywood doesn’t understand pacing. Their executives are driving 100 miles-per-hour looking in the rear-view mirror and not understanding why they crash.”
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What do you make of Vaughn’s original plans? Would you have liked to see a young Wolverine movie leading into Days of Future Past? Would it have made any sense given Hugh Jackman’s First Class cameo? Or could you overlook that for a Tom Hardy-led Logan? Let us know in the comments below or tweet us @FlickeringMyth…
Originally published June 8, 2019. Updated June 9, 2019.
