Update: Borys Kit's Heat Vision Blog reports that while it is true Fox offered X-Men: First Class to Matthew Vaughn, he has already passed. Smart move. Daniel Espinosa, who directed SNABBA CASH, is apparently the new golden child and has met with a ton of Execs about a multitude of projects and Kit says he's one of the top contenders for the "franchise reboot" that is X-Men: First Class. Espinosa has also met with Leonardo DiCaprio about PRISONERS, Universal about a thriller called SAFE HOUSE and Benicio del Toro for a crime flick called MAKING JACK FALCONE. That sounds about right. I'd warn Mr. Espinosa, though... Foreign director, hot shit, X-Men... Look what happened to Gavin Hood on WOLVERINE... just sayin'...
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I find it extremely funny that Fox is going back to Matthew Vaughn for an X-Men movie after they ran him through the ringer on X-Men 3. I'm not going to pretend I know everything that went down behind the scenes on that film and I do know there were a lot of reasons why Vaughn stepped down, but I can say that when I met him on the set of Stardust he told me a story about their treatment of The Beast, and Tom Rothman's opinion of fans in general, that would royally piss you off and was one of the reasons Vaughn dropped out. EW has a scoop that Fox is now returning to Vaughn, offering him the X-Men Babies... Sorry, X-Men: First Class, a movie that follows young Cyclops, Jean Gray, Wolverine, etc. Vaughn could very well tell them to take that job and shove it all Office Space style, but the offer is supposedly on the table, with Fox covering their bases by feeling out other directors as well. If this were Vaughn being offered an X-Men sequel or even one of the spin-offs that focuses solely on one of the group (like Wolverine, Magneto, etc) I'd be jumping for joy. KICK-ASS was great, Vaughn can do a giant, mainstream superhero movie well, I think, but I don't particularly like the idea of already going back for origin stories. We're already getting that with Spider-Man. With so many great storylines from the comics untold I don't get why we're in a rut of repeating the beginnings... Well, economically I get it. Younger actors, less expensive actors, no reworked deals with high back end percentage points, yadda-yadda-yadda, but I don't get the creative appeal of these films for filmmakers. I have a gut feeling that Rothman won't let Vaughn make the movie he wants, just like on X3, if Vaughn does accept. A part of me would love to root for Vaughn to make it work, but mostly I'd just like to see him be able to make whatever he has a passion for in a way that gives him a lot more creative wiggle room than he would have at Fox. Thoughts? -Quint quint@aintitcool.com Follow Me On Twitter
