‘Once she signs up, we’ll throw it in the bin’: The director who quit the most expensive movie ever made weeks before shooting explains why

Despite having just one feature-length credit under his belt, Matthew Vaughn was selected by 20th Century Fox as its preferred candidate to direct X-Men: The Last Stand, which was the most expensive movie in history at the time with an eye-watering budget of $210 million.

However, the filmmaker ended up exiting the production just weeks before shooting was due to start, with Brett Ratner drafted in as a last-minute replacement to deliver what was comfortably the worst-reviewed outing the mutants had ever embarked upon before things ultimately went even further downhill. It sounds as though he dodged a bullet, but at New York Comic-Con (per ComicBook), Vaughn dived into one of the reasons why he jumped ship.

Incredibly, the studio came right out and revealed that it was planning to effectively dupe Halle Berry into reprising her role as Storm, despite carrying the full intention of altering the screenplay once she’d signed on the dotted line.

“One of the main reasons I actually quit X3 and it was a true story, and I don’t care if I’m not meant to say it, but Hollywood is really political in an odd way. I went into one of the executives office and I saw an X3 script and I immediately knew that it was a lot fatter. I was like, ‘What the hell’s this? This draft?’ Oh, don’t worry about it. Like no, no, I’m the director. I’m worrying about this draft. Tell me what it is. Wouldn’t tell me, so I grabbed it from him. It was like a crazy moment, but I grabbed it.

Open the first page and it said Africa, Storm. kids dying have no water, she creates a thunderstorm and saves all these children. Okay, it’s pretty cool idea. They said it was the ‘The Halle Berry script,’ because she hasn’t signed up yet. But once she gets what she wants it to be and she signs up, we’ll throw it in the bin. And I was like, ‘Wow, you’re going to do that to an Oscar-winning actress who plays Storm? I’m out of here. So I quit.”

That might help explain why Berry eventually grew cold on the character, never mind the various directions the X-Men franchise ended up spiraling into following the conclusion of the original trilogy, but it definitely sounds like Vaughn made the right call.