10 Planned Comic Book Movie Sequels (And What Happened)
5. X-Men Origins: Magneto
The Planned Sequel
It was another failed Fox project - an origin story focused on Magneto. With Magneto as one of the all-time greatest comic book villains, this movie could have been amazing.
Pitched as “X-Men meets The Pianist”, the film would have shown Magneto and Xavier becoming friends before their relationship fell apart due to their different views of humanity. Ideas were thrown about for using CGI to 'de-age' Sir Ian McKellen so that he could still portray a young Magneto, and seeing him and Patrick Stewart flex their acting muscles in a more dramatic and less action-packed film could have been epic.
What Happened?
The X-Men series was going strong, after 2 great starting movies and one kinda-meh third film, but X-Men Origins: Wolverine was not the followup Fox wanted. The movie was clichéd and boring, and certainly wasn’t the big financial success they were betting on.
This, and a healthy dose of development hell, led to them deciding to scrap the planned sequel, and instead rework these ideas into the excellent X-Men: First Class - so it wasn't a complete loss!