Yahoo News Matthew Vaughn says Halle Berry was tricked into “X-Men: The Last Stand” with fake Storm script
Though he eventually directed 2011's X-Men: First Class, Matthew Vaughn almost entered Marvel's mutant film franchise even earlier. At his spotlight panel at New York Comic Con on Saturday, Vaughn recalled his experience working on 2006's X-Men: The Last Stand, which he was originally slated to direct before being replaced by Brett Ratner.
Vaughn observed the studio being deceitful with Oscar-winning actress Halle Berry, who played the superhero Storm. "Hollywood is really political and odd. I went into an executive's office and I saw a script that was a lot fatter," the director recalled. "I was like, what the hell's this draft? They said, 'don't worry about it.'"
Vaughn was the film's director at that point, so he decided he did need to worry about it. He grabbed the script and opened it to the first page, which was a scene set in Africa where Berry's Storm would create a thunderstorm to save starving children.
"That's a pretty cool idea," Vaughn said. "So I was like, what's this? They said it was the Halle Berry script. 'She hasn't signed on yet, but this is what she wants it to be. So once she signs on, we'll throw it in the bin.' I said wow, you're going to do that to an Oscar-winning actress? I'm out of here. So I quit at that point. I figured I was mincemeat."
Everett Collection Halle Berry as Storm in 'X-Men: The Last Stand.'
Representatives for Berry did not immediately respond to EW's request for comment on this story.
Vaughn's time on The Last Stand was also his first experience with Hollywood, following his low-budget directorial debut Layer Cake and years of producing his friend Guy Ritchie's British crime films before that. It was not a positive experience. He recalled one Fox executive giving him the classic "you'll never work in this town again" speech, "and I believed it."
Vaughn eventually returned to the X-Men franchise, after Bryan Singer (whose work he admired on X2) personally called to recruit him. In between The Last Stand and First Class, the success of Vaughn's Kick-Ass had endeared him to Hollywood once again. He would've directed X-Men: Days of Future Past too, "but Hollywood forgot to tell me, after I wrote the damn thing, that Bryan got to direct it first."
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