In the late-’90s, before writing his first screenplay, David Hayter was a struggling actor. To make make ends meet, he worked for the young-and-upcoming director Bryan Singer — answering his phone. And while pre-production began on the first X-Men film, Singer kept leaning on Hayter, an avid comic book reader, for advice on how to approach each mutant. He trusted him so much so that he had 20th Century Fox hire Hayter to pen the script. Things went so well that Hayter was brought back to co-write X2 and had discussion with Singer about writing the third film in the series.
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However, when Singer went off to direct Superman Returns instead of X-Men: The Last Stand, nobody approached Hayter about writing the film. But if he had, what would his third X-Men film had been like?
“The image that I wanted for X-Men 3 trailer was essentially, you see Xavier and Logan facing off against Jean and her eyes are on fire and she’s become the Dark Phoenix and they are talking about the war between humans and mutants and she says something along the lines of, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll put an end to it,’” Hayter explained to THR. “And then we cut to this statue of Iwo Jima in Washington, as the sun is coming up, but it’s still twilight and purple, and you see a flare of orange and it melts away. She fires through, on fire and blasts right through it. You see the Capitol Building and she flies up to the White House and lands into the middle of the street. We cut opposite and we see the entire army arrayed against her. She’s like “Come on!” and we cut to black.I went up to set on X-Men 3. I met [director] Brett Ratner there. They said, ‘This is David Hayter,” and he was like, ‘Oh my God, we need you on this!’ I was like, ‘I bet!’ It was the day with the big sentinel head and Hugh in the training room.”
X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) – In the X-Men’s epic, final battle, the well-known mutant heroes and villains meet a cadre of all-new warriors – including Angel (Ben Foster), Beast (Kelsey Grammer), Juggernaut (Vinnie Jones) and Colossus (Daniel Cudmore) – in a thrilling, explosive adventure! After a controversial “cure” is discovered, mutants can choose to retain their superhuman abilities or give up their unique gifts and become “normal.” When the peaceful mutant leader Charles Xavier clashes with his militant counterpart, Magneto, the battle lines are drawn for the war to end all wars.
The film was directed by Brett Ratner and written by Simon Kinberg and Zak Penn. On a production budget of $210 million, X-Men: The Last Stand went on to earn $459.4 million at the global box office.
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