10 Cinematic Universes That Failed To Happen

Although not a cinematic universe in the way we’re use to seeing now, the X-Men Origins movies were intended to expand on the well known superhero series after the “so-called” conclusion that was The Last Stand. The idea was to have a series of stand alone movies based on individual X-Men characters from the films. Although a novel idea, the only two that got anywhere were the Wolverine and Magneto projects.

In fact, the only one that saw the light of day was X-Men Origins: Wolverine, directed by Gavin Hood. It seemed like a sure fire hit at the time. Wolverine was the most popular character from the original trilogy and Hugh Jackman was a megastar. This didn’t help though, and although it did modestly at the box office, it wasn’t the big hit that 20th Century Fox wanted. The poor critical reception also didn't help.

Unlike many unsuccessful shared universe attempts, the failure of Wolverine proved to be beneficial for this franchise. The Magneto spin-off was scrapped and transformed into X-Men First Class, an entry that has gone down as one of the series best, and many solid entries followed suit. Of course, it would take them a while to finally get Deadpool right.