X-Men: First Class screenwriter Zack Stentz dropped a bombshell recently. With the X-Men franchise coming to a close with Dark Phoenix due to Disney’s buyout of Fox, he felt that he was able to finally reveal that he worked on a secret X-Men vs. Fantastic Four movie back in 2010. He didn’t drop any more details about his script other than that, but some further juicy info on the aborted crossover event has now come to light.
The Hollywood Reporter discovered that the plan was to make it a Civil War film, meaning that if they’d gone ahead, Fox would’ve beaten Marvel to the punch with adapting the seminal comics storyline. The conflict was set to begin when the Human Torch went “nova while trying to apprehend the villain Molecule Man” through New York, thereby blowing a hole in Manhattan. This led to a Superhero Registration Act being put into place, dividing the heroes.
Apparently, one of the major fights in the film was due to be between the unlikely enemies Wolverine and Mr. Fantastic. Even more surprising is the fact that Reed Richards was going to beat Logan by using his abilities to chop off the X-Man’s arms.
“Among the key match ups was a Wolverine vs. Mr. Fantastic battle that ended with Reed Richards pinning Wolverine down, extending his hands until they’re one molecule wide, and using them as scissors to cut the mutant’s arms off.”
The other big news is that the movie would’ve wrapped up with a post-credits scene teasing a Skrull invasion of Earth – another major development the studio could’ve got to before Marvel. As it happens, though, the screenplay from Stentz and then writing partner Ashley Edward Miller never got the green light. And even though a completely separate script from comic book scribe Warren Ellis was also developed, we unfortuntely never got to see the X-Men and the Fantastic Four meet on-screen.
Marvel, it’s now up to you.
