20 facts you might not know about 'X-Men'

It took a while to get Marvel’s X-Men on the big screen. A screenplay was first written in 1984 by Marvel writers Gerry Conway and Roy Thomas for Orion. However, Orion fell into financial trouble, development stalled, and the company lost the rights to the X-Men.

At the end of the 1980s, Stan Lee turned to a couple of filmmakers who definitely could have handled an X-Men movie. James Cameron was going to produce, and Kathryn Bigelow was going to direct. Bigelow started working on the story, and some actors were even being considered, such as Bob Hoskins and Angela Bassett. Then, Lee got Cameron interested in making a Spider-Man movie, and the X-Men movie fell through.

20th Century Fox put an X-Men cartoon on their animated kids block, and it proved quite successful for them. Even to this day, this X-Men cartoon is quite popular with the proverbial ‘90s Kids. Because of the success of the cartoon, Fox decided to consider doing a live-action X-Men movie. They bought the rights in 1994, and then hired Andrew Kevin Walker to write the script.

Robert Rodriguez was given the chance to direct X-Men, but he declined. Then, they offered the gig to Paul W.S. Anderson, but he didn’t want to make a PG-13 action movie after turning Mortal Kombat into PG-13 fare.

After the success of The Usual Suspects, Bryan Singer was one of the hottest names in Hollywood. Fox offered him the chance to direct Alien Resurrection, but producer Tom DeSanto had another idea. He thought Singer would be better for X-Men, and he was able to convince Singer to switch projects.

We mentioned Walker, who wrote the first couple of drafts. Famed novelist Michael Chabon threw in a six-page treatment at one point. Ed Solomon, writer of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Men in Black, did a rewrite. John Logan? James Schamus? Yep, they got involved, too. Famed punch-up artist Joss Whedon did a total rewrite that the producers apparently disliked and barely used. The Usual Suspects writer Christopher McQuarrie was brought in for a rewrite as well, of course. And yet, none of them ended up credited on the movie.

Originally, Fox announced a release date of Christmas in 1998. Obviously, they missed that by, oh, a couple of years. The project apparently wasn’t going well at the time. That year, Chris Claremont, who wrote X-Men comics for 17 years, was so concerned about the project he wrote a four-page memo to Fox to help explain the X-Men and why they were different than other superheroes. That same year, Singer and DeSanto also put together a treatment for the film to try and help push the screenplay in a new direction. That treatment helped the duo get the "story by" credit on X-Men.

When Fox received the treatment from Singer and DeSanto, they would not green light the movie at first. Their issue? They figured it was going to be too expensive. Cuts were required, so Singer decided a few characters would have to get the boot. Nightcrawler, Beast, and Pyro were all removed from the X-Men story in order to get the go ahead for the movie.

David Hayter was apparently a big comics fan and knew the X-Men quite well. He was also Singer’s assistant. That evidently was enough to get him not just a writing credit, but the sole writing credit. However, over the years, the role Hayter truly played in the final script has come up to debate. It was reported in 2020 that both Solomon and McQuarrie had voluntarily removed their names from the film due to frustration with the process of working with Fox. Hayter has said that 55 percent of the final script is his, while others in the know have said that the script is mostly Solomon and McQuarrie’s, with Hayter barely having contributed anything that made it to screen.

If you are the sort of person who reads about movie casting — and if you are reading this right now, you are probably one of those people — you know there was a time when Michael Jackson was actively campaigning for a lot of movie roles. Invariably, you think to yourself, “Man, it would have been weird if Michael Jackson was in that movie.” Also invariably, Jackson wasn’t cast. Well, Jackson wanted to play Charles Xavier, and really made it known, but he was reportedly never considered for the role.

These days, it seems that every big actor is in a comic book movie. Back in the day, though, not everybody was looking to get in a superhero film. Russell Crowe and Viggo Mortensen both turned down Wolverine. As did Glenn Danzig, who was mostly chosen because he had the same body type as the Wolverine from the comics. Charlize Theron turned down the chance to play Jean Grey. Rachael Leigh Cook could have played Rogue, but also declined, which she later said she regretted.

Jim Caviezel was the original actor cast for Cyclops, but then he backed out due to scheduling conflicts with his movie Frequency. Then, famously, Dougray Scott was cast as Wolverine and signed a multi-movie deal. He was also in another film franchise at the time, Mission: Impossible 2. This caused scheduling conflicts, but it also led to him suffering injuries from a motorcycle accident. As a result, Scott could not play Wolverine.

When Crowe turned down the role of Wolverine, the actor recommended a friend of his: Hugh Jackman. At the time, the Australian actor was an unknown in America. In fact, he now-infamously was recast in Oklahoma! when his production moved from London to Broadway. After Scott had to drop out, Jackman was able to audition, and he was cast. He had to hit the ground running, though. Jackman was cast three weeks into filming.

While they kept Wolverine Canadian for X-Men, they didn’t stick to one key thing about the character. In the comics, Wolverine is 5’3’’. Jackman, on the other hand, is a foot taller than that. While they didn’t try to pretend that Jackman was that much shorter, they did try to manipulate things a bit. James Marsden, who plays Cyclops, had to wear lifts in his boots to be taller than Jackman, even though he’s six feet tall himself.

In the comics, and on the cartoon, the X-Men wear blue-and-yellow spandex costumes. DeSanto wanted that to be the case in the film, but it was decided they should wear black leather as well. You know who else supported this decision? Both Lee and Claremont. Claremont even said, “You can do that on a drawing, but when you put it on people, it's disturbing!”

X-Men didn’t get close to the original Christmas 1998 release, and it was then moved to Christmas 2000. Then, it was moved again. Steven Spielberg had put off Minority Report to direct A.I., and that left Fox without a big summer tentpole. The movie was moved up to June 2000, meaning the film had to be finished six months early. It would eventually get moved again to July 14, giving them a little extra time.

At this point, many alarming accusations have been thrown at Singer, and a lot of them are tied to X-Men. However, we don’t have to dip into the sexual misbehavior to discuss Singer being a problematic figure on the set. According to rumors and reports, Singer was extremely temperamental on set, and he also apparently would show up late all the time. He asserted it was due to medication he was taking for back pain, but this did not assuage concerns. Kevin Feige, now a huge force in Hollywood as president of Marvel Studios, was an associate producer on X-Men. He was tasked with being on set to keep an eye on Singer after the concerns were voiced.

It’s not uncommon for a big film to have a splashy premiere. Usually, though, they happen at a movie theater of some kind. X-Men did things slightly different. They decided to have the premiere on Ellis Island, the place where European immigrants would land at when they came to America.

On its opening day, X-Men made $21.4 million, the third-highest opening day ever. It would also have the highest-ever opening weekend for a superhero film. All in all, X-Men made $296.3 million worldwide off of a budget of $75 million, making it the ninth-highest-grossing film of 2000.

In 2003, X-Men was followed by X2. A trilogy was completed a few years later, with Singer replaced by Brett Ratner as director. There was then a prequel/reboot series that did eventually tie this trilogy in. Plus, there are Jackman’s Wolverine solo films, which ended with Logan.