Matthew Vaughn Says He Quit ‘X-Men: The Last Stand’ After Scheme To Deceive Halle Berry Into Signing For Return With A Fake Storm Script

Matthew Vaughn is opening up about one of the reasons he had for quitting directing X-Men: The Last Stand. The director revealed during New York Comic Con he left the film after finding out a scheme to get Halle Berry to sign on to reprise her role of Storm by tricking her with a fake script.

“One of the main reasons I quit X-Men 3, and this is a true story. Hollywood is really political and odd,” he said during NYCC (via ScreenRant). “I went to an executive’s office and I saw an X3 script. It was a lot fatter. I asked, ‘What is this draft?’ They were like, ‘Don’t worry about it.'”

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He continued, “So I grabbed it, and opened the first page, and it said, ‘Africa. Kids dying from no water, and Storm creates a thunderstorm to save all these children.’ I thought it was a pretty cool idea. I said, ‘What is this?’ They said, ‘This is the Halle Berry script because she hasn’t signed on yet. This is what she wants it to be. And once she signs on, we’ll throw it in the bin.’ I thought, if you’re going to do that to an Oscar-winning actress who plays Storm, I quit. I thought I’m mincemeat.”

Vaughn would drop out of directing the X-Men film and went on to direct Stardust. Berry ultimately signed up to reprise the role of Storm in the 2006 film that ended up being directed by Brett Ratner. The scene that was described in the fake script did not make the final cut of the film.

In 2011, Vaughn returned to the Marvel Comics world to direct X-Men: First Class, a reboot of the franchise that was ultimately retconned to serve as a prequel to the previous X-Men films.

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