X-Men: Dark Phoenix director Simon Kinberg has teased at an alternate plan for the film that would have involved Famke Janssen’s Jean Grey.
X-Men: Dark Phoenix will probably go down in history as one of the most botched productions in the franchise’s entire history. The film underwent several reshoots, with the entire climax being completely reworked. The film was delayed several times as a result and the end product was a movie that failed to wow critics and couldn’t draw in audiences. The film would gross a little over $250M on a $200M budget, ending the Fox-owned X-Men-era on a whimper. But it seems that director Simon Kinberg may have had another idea in mind for the film.
Simon Kienberg is, of course, the director of X-Men: Dark Phoenix but has also served as a producer and writer on several other projects in the franchise, which included X-Men: Days of Future Past. The film’s ending notably contained several cameos from several of the franchise’s original cast. This included Kelsey Grammer’s Beast, James Marsden’s Cyclops, and, of course, Famke Janssen’s Jean Grey.
During a watch party for X-Men: Days of Future Past, Simon Kienberg offered up an alternative idea for Dark Phoenix. He doesn’t say whether or not this idea was ever seriously considered but offers teases at a Dark Phoenix story that takes place after this final scene where the storyline plays out with Famke Janssen’s version of the character and brought the story back to its intergalactic story roots:
“It’s possible that… in the alternate universe… because it would’ve been about ten, fifteen years since The Last Stand, you could do Dark Phoenix with Famke. And you could do it with the Hellfire Club, and you could do it I think with the screen time it necessitates because it’s such a complex storyline. You’d probably want a two-part movie: you’d want to bring the Hellfire Club in; you’d want it to be truly intergalactic; you’d want to bring in Lilandra; you’d want to really tell it that way. And I think you’d need at least one bridge movie this [Days of Future Past] and the beginning of that [Dark Phoenix]. But the maturity of those actors and the history that goes back would’ve been 25 years – at this point (2014 when DoFP was released) 20 years since X1 – could’ve been really interesting.”
What do you all make of this idea? Would you have preferred to see the new version of X-Men Dark Phoenix play out with Famke Janssen and the original cast? Let us know what you think in the comments below!
Here is the official synopsis for X-Men: Dark Phoenix:
This is the story of one of the X-Men’s most beloved characters, Jean Grey, as she evolves into the iconic DARK PHOENIX. During a life-threatening rescue mission in space, Jean is hit by a cosmic force that transforms her into one of the most powerful mutants of all. Wrestling with this increasingly unstable power as well as her own personal demons, Jean spirals out of control, tearing the X-Men family apart and threatening to destroy the very fabric of our planet. The film is the most intense and emotional X-Men movie ever made. It is the culmination of 20 years of X-Men movies, as the family of mutants that we’ve come to know and love must face their most devastating enemy yet — one of their own.
Written and directed by Simon Kinberg, X-Men: Dark Phoenix stars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Sophie Turner, Tye Sheridan, Alexandra Shipp, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Evan Peters, and Jessica Chastain.
X-Men: Dark Phoenix is now available on Digital HD, 4k Ultra HD, Blu-ray, and DVD. Stay tuned for all the latest news on the future of the X-Men in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and be sure to subscribe to Heroic Hollywood’s YouTube channel for more great video content!
Source: IGN
