X-Men Screenwriter Shares His Original Vision For The Third Film
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.
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…