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With a mustache, the cool factor would be too much
Location: left side of my couch, East Texas
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I found another link about the new X3 director, Matthew Vaughn, an interview with Marvel's big bossman, Avi Arad, (about X3 and what the story entails) and also, I found a story from December that talks about a spin-off movie Marvel is going to make about Magneto.
Quote:
http://www.empireonline.co.uk/site/n...?news_id=16647
Vaughn Confirmed for X3
Layer Cake director to tackle mutants
22 March 2005
He's been in talks for a couple of weeks now, but Matthew Vaughn has finally been confirmed as the director of X3. The Layer Cake director and producer of Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch will make the third instalment of everyone's favourite supermutant franchise – but, you know, no pressure.
Vaughn, who recently won the Empire Award for Best British Director, will be stepping into the stylish shoes of Bryan Singer, who quit the franchise to direct Superman Returns, and will have his work cut out to maintain the legacy that he left behind. But the producers must have faith in him – when we spoke to producer Lauren Shuler Donner a few weeks ago about their choice of director, she said, "We want a director who's really good at telling stories. Hopefully, just like when Alfonso Cuaron came in on Harry Potter, and he made it even better, hopefully we're going to make it even better."
Fingers crossed. At this point most of the original cast are returning, but Halle Berry, Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart are apparently still in negotiation. What's more, a draft of the script has been completed and is now in the tinkering stage, with the rumours growing ever stronger that this episode will see the Phoenix saga come to the big screen. For those who aren't familiar with that, may we suggest that you read the comic, or ask our forum below, but there was a clue in the very last shot of X2…
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Quote:
http://www.empireonline.co.uk/site/n...?news_id=16656
Avi Arad Talks X-Men 3
Exclusive: The Marvel chief on Matthew Vaughn, Dark Phoenix and more
24 March 2005
The ink may have barely dried on the contract that confirmed Matthew Vaughn – Empire’s very own recently-anointed Best British Director for Layer Cake, don’t forget – as the new director in charge of X-Men 3, but that hasn’t stopped fanboys, fangirls and fanblueskinnedwotsits everywhere from trying to fathom the plot details of the third instalment of Fox/Marvel’s mighty mutant franchise, which begins filming in August.
Well, partially worry no more, folks, for Empire just happened to be in LA this week. And inbetween running into the wonderful Mark Steven Johnson (and his lovely wife) in a Santa Monica toy shop (the Daredevil director assuring anonymity by, um, wearing a Daredevil baseball cap), and being attacked by bees, we took time out to visit the fine folks at Marvel, including the head honcho himself, Avi Arad. And we didn’t waste time in mentioning X.
“We are incredibly excited about Matthew,” said Avi. “We love his sensibilities. I thought Layer Cake was incredibly stylish, with a lot of characters. In some ways he had stylistically the look of X-Men, it was very crisp.”
The fanboy doubters – and let’s face it, if God himself was directing X3 with Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain doing the soundtrack, the whingeing beardies still wouldn’t be happy – have used Vaughn’s inexperience as a director as grist to their moaning mill. But Avi is confident that he’s got the right man. “It’s no less a leap than it was for Bryan [Singer, previous X-director, now shooting Superman Returns]. With movies of this size, it’s hard to wing it. He’s very confident, that’s what I like about him. ‘Yeah, I can do that!’
“Just when he had started,” continued Avi, by way of example, “we had some conversation about one of the characters and he says ‘I know how to introduce him’ and I said ‘let’s hear it’ and it was a really smart thing that’s going to be in the movie. It’s a love-fest.”
Glad to hear it, for we’re pretty damn psyched about Vaughn’s involvement, too. But the mention of a new character leads us onto internet tittle-tattle about the likes of Gambit (Cajun cad who charges cards kinetically, which is really handy if you’re an alliteration freak), Beast (big hairy ape-like bloke with more brains than Dr. Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates and that bloke off The Late Review put together) and Angel (flying mutant, not TV’s David Boreanaz) all making their bows this time around, alongside the already-established mutants.
Avi, however, was tight-lipped on all but Angel. “It won’t be a female Angel. I don’t know where that came from, maybe because he looks angelic,” he laughed. “There will be interesting characters that will be introduced. It just has to move forward. Obviously we have Wolverine, and Magneto, Professor X, Storm, Cyclops, Nightcrawler, Rogue, all these characters, but then you need to freshen up the story and make it new.”
Still, we’d bet 20p that the character Vaughn was talking about introducing was Gambit. However, we’ll be perfectly happy if we’re surprised in a major way. And with X3, that seems to be the order of the day. For example, most seasoned X-perts would have reckoned that X3 would focus on the return and conversion to the dark side of Jean Grey’s now ultra-powerful and back from the dead Phoenix, also known as The Dark Phoenix Saga. Well, maybe. But then again…
“It should never be this one story. The main characters are more important than Jean Grey,” admitted Avi, which should please Famke Janssen no end. “This is a bigger story. Everybody’s expecting Dark Phoenix, but Dark Phoenix would never be the main show. She’ll be one of the characters, that’s it. There are a lot of stories to tell.”
And which story, pray tell, are we to expect here, given that Zak Penn is still working on the script for the movie?
“We needed something that is very big,” said Avi. “In movie two, it was mutants against humans. In movie one, it was trying to understand. In movie three, it is probably philosophically the most interesting and provocative for all of us.”
Does that mean the introduction of the mutant-killing Sentinels, we ventured, only to be met by Avi’s very own mutant power – the ability to stonewall. Ouch. “It’s funny because when we sat with Tom Rothman [Fox bigwig], he said ‘this has to be an action drama’ and it was music to my ears, because that’s what X-Men is. That opens the door for a concept for this movie that will be disturbing and fascinating and controversial. It will be an interesting debate – should we or shouldn’t we?” Hmm… sounds like mutant genocide could be on the cards. “All I can say is it’s going to be a very interesting dilemma. It’s a very intelligent movie. I think it’s contextually going to be the best. We are so excited.”
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Quote:
http://www.empireonline.co.uk/site/n...?news_id=16426
Magneto Movie In The Works
Wanted: a younger Ian McKellen for X-Men spin-off
13 December 2004
Think of the great spin-offs you may have seen. Frasier. Max & Paddy’s Road To Nowhere. Frosted Wheats. Now think of the bad – Joanie Loves Chachi, Holby City, Raisin Wheats – and you’ll quickly realise that the bad in this case outweighs the good. So into which category will Fox and Marvel’s Magneto, the X-Men spin-off that was announced today, fit?
We’re erring on the side of the former, mainly because the plotline for the movie, as pitched to Marvel and Fox by Sheldon Turner, screenwriter of the forthcoming Adam Sandler remake, The Longest Yard, sounds intriguing. "I pitched a film that is almost The Pianist meets X-Men, about a guy who, after watching his family slaughtered, has an awakening of his powers and seeks revenge," he told Variety.
And that combo sounds right. Magneto will take place just after World War II, as an embittered and significantly younger Erik Magnus Lensherr vows revenge for the death of his family and the broader genocide of the Jews in the Holocaust. Along the way, he discovers his powers, his mutant activism and meets up with another young mutant – Professor Charles Xavier – sowing the seeds for a friendship/rivalry that will feed into the X-Men movies.
Inspired by the prologue to Bryan Singer’s original X-Men, in which we saw a young Lensherr first display his powers of magnetism at a WWII concentration camp, Magneto promises to be a much more serious and thoughtful affair than most comic book movies, and could form a fascinating insight into the relationship between Xavier and Magneto, which is one of the most complicated and vital in comics. Their Martin Luther King-Malcolm X dynamic was the main factor that persuaded Singer to sign on for X-Men in the first place.
It’s certainly a brave move on Fox and Marvel’s part (the movie will be produced by Lauren Shuler Donner and Marvel’s Avi Arad) to base a spin-off around the X-franchise’s principal villain and not, say, Xavier himself. It’s also not clear at the moment whether Patrick Stewart or Ian McKellen, who play the older Professor X and Magneto in the X-movies, will make appearances here, but one thing is certain: two young (probably British) actors are going to have the chance of a lifetime.
Fox/Marvel are obviously gearing up for an X-Men onslaught over the next couple of years. Screenwriters Simon Kinberg and David Benioff are slaving away at the moment on their scripts for X-Men 3 and a Wolverine spin-off for Hugh Jackman, respectively. No directors are in place for any of the X-projects, but it can only be a matter of time with the studios aiming for a release pattern kicking off in Summer 2006.
We’ll obviously keep you updated on Magneto and any other X-Men news – spin-offs for Halle Berry’s Storm? James Marsden’s Cyclops? Ray Park’s Toad? – as we get it.
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I sincerely hope they pull off what I'm imagining in my mind's eye for the Magneto movie.
Damn, that would be sweetly cool!  |