Matthew Vaughn Was Told “You’ll Never Work in This Town Again” After Ditching X-Men 3

New York Comic Con is currently in full swing, and while actors in attendance are unable to discuss their projects due to the SAG strike, some directors are there are sharing insights into their past and future films. During a panel, Matthew Vaughn confirmed he’s working on a Kick-Ass reboot as well as Kingsman 3, and also discussed his time working in the X-Men franchise. Vaughn is known for helming X-Men: First Class, but he almost directed X-Men: The Last Stand. He revealed during the panel that he left the project after a fake script was written to trick Halle Berry (Storm). He also recalled being told he’d never work in Hollywood again after leaving the project.

“Yeah, that was bizarre because I went from Layer Cake, a tiny 3 million pound movie, and suddenly I got Hollywood calling up saying, ‘Would you like to make an X-Men movie?’ And I was like, ‘Yes.’ And I thought X-2 is a masterpiece. So I was worried about trying to step into Bryan Singer’s shoes, and it was a dream come true. I storyboarded the movie. The end of the movie was not the movie I was gonna make. The Golden Gate sequence was the beginning of Act Two and we had this crazy action sequence for Washington … but I was naive,” Vaughn explained.

“The way I produce films was, ‘Here’s a budget and a schedule, stick to it.’ And Hollywood doesn’t work that way. They go, ‘Here’s the budget. Here’s a schedule. We’re going to pretend we’re going to do it for that and then we’ll make it all up,’ and I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that back then. so I was naive to walk out. I was given the speech, ‘You’ll never work in this town again,’ and I sort of believed in that,” he continued. 

“The man who said you’ll never work in this town again, watched Kick-Ass. And to his credit, he rang me up and said, ‘You know what, I didn’t mean it when I said that,’” Vaughn added. 

While Vaughn has no plans to return to the world of X-Men, he did tease his Kick-Ass reboot at NYCC.

“We will be doing a reboot of Kick-Ass next year, but it’s a total… it’s like… it’s as brave as the first one but totally different and more reflective of the times we’re in,” Vaughn told ComicBook.com. 

Stay tuned for more updates from NYCC.