A week after Matthew Vaughn ended his involvement in the third X-Men movie Fox studios locked in Brett Ratner to direct the third installment in the mutant franchise.
Ratner, best known for Rush Hour, Red Dragon and the crap that was After the Sunset, was originally in the mix to direct the first X-Men movie only to lose out to Bryan Singer.
As further proof that Hollywood is a small town Singer left X-3 in order to direct Superman Returns when Ratner left after a year in development. IMDB reports that Ratner took most of the production and writing team with him when he left after a series of disputes.
Vaughn claims he left the film because he didn’t want to move his family to Canada for a year, like he didn’t know that that going in. Wizard reported the director was nervous about doing such a big studio film for his sophomore film after indy hit Layer Cake. He also reportedly clashed over script issues.
Apparently principle photography is set to begin in August in Canada and the film is on track for an August 2006 release date. Apparently Ratner will still be working from a script by Zak Penn, a friend of Bryan Singer’s brought on to help writer X2
Other X-Men 3 news:
- Maggie Grace, the non pregnant blonde one from Lost, was originally slated to be Kitty Pride but was told she was too old and Lost producers apparently threatened to kill off her character.
- Kelsey Grammer, who spent 24 years playing Dr. Frasier Crane, has signed on to play beast.
- Alan Cumming’s contract was not picked up to play Night Crawler.
Article comments
1 - Redon Demushi
How can they take out Nightcrawler from X3?That's just stupid. You can ask anyone who saw X2 what the best part of the movie was, and they will say the Nightcrawler attack on the president. That part of the movie was pure genius. Taking nightcrawler out of X3 will only hurt the movie in the number of viewer of the movie. Nightcrawler is a classic character in the X-Men.