Embattled X-Men: Days of Future Past director Bryan Singer will reportedly sit out the press tour for the film in the wake of sexual abuse allegations leveled against him in a recent lawsuit, Buzzfeed reports.The director did not appear at WonderCon in Anaheim this weekend and indeed was not even mentioned during the 20th Century Fox panel, where he was replaced by writer Simon Kinberg.While Singer claims to have an alibi for the worst of the accusations made against him in the lawsuit, similar allegations have come up in the past, and now that one is moved into the litigation phase, it seems plausible that he will have to spend a not-insignificant amount of time defending himself before the episode is over.That it came up five weeks ahead of the Days of Future Past release and has grabbed headlines and dragged the film into the mud a bit likely doesn’t thrill the studio, either — especially as they have been hoping for a rebound of the franchise’s fortunes on this movie. The Merry Marvel Mutants’s box office fortunes have been in decline since the critically-panned 2006 X-Men: The Last Stand, with The Wolverine making $100 million less domestically than did the Brett Ratner-directed stinker.The same can be said of Singer, who hasn’t had a film he directed break $200 million domestically since Superman Returns and whose last film — Jack the Giant Slayer — made $65 million domestically on a nearly $200 million budget. In fairness, much of the intervening time was spent working in television, where he was the Executive Producer of the long-running Fox hit House, M.D.
