Post by Admin on Jun 14, 2019 3:36:55 GMT
www.cbr.com/orion-canceled-80s-x-men-movie/
Financial Failure Saved Fans From the Worst Possible X-Men Movie
by Eric Bartsch – on Jun 13, 2019
Decades before the first X-Men movie hit theaters, there were numerous attempts to being Marvel's Children of the Atom to the big screen. In the wake of Superman's box office success, one attempt to give Marvel's mutants a major motion picture almost happened in the 1980s.
With the help of Canadian animation studio Nelvana, Marvel's Stan Lee and Alice Donenfeld-Vernoux at Marvel tried to get a live-action X-Men movie made and secured a distribution deal with Orion Pictures. Hirsh brought on celebrated X-Scribe Chris Claremont to write two treatments, before two more veteran Marvel writers, Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway, joined the project.
While Orion was in the midst of a decades full of era-defining hits like The Terminator, First Blood and Robocop, the X-Men movie never made it past the script stage after Orion has a disastrous year in 1985, when only two of its 13 movies were profitable.
“Orion decided it wasn’t in their bailiwick. We lost the option and it went to Fox,” said explained Hirsh.
As a special-effects extravaganza based on a "niche" property, an X-Men movie wasn't considered a "sound investment" for Orion, which was well on its way to bankruptcy.
However, according to Conway, this X-Men movie was never going to be a Marvel masterpiece. Several drafts of the film featured Proteus as a villain, first as a comics-accurate body-possessing entity, then as a soul sucker and finally in the form of a vampiric CEO who drained life energy.
The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants would've shown up too as the Brotherhood. Dur to the producers' distaste for the word, the word "mutant'
Mutants were another matter. In the final draft, the word wasn't even used due to producers' interference and distaste for the term.
“I guarantee you that almost every change that’s made of that script that moves it away from the traditional X-Men mythology was something that was instigated by the producers,” said Conway, adding, "It was a disheartening experience working with amateurs who probably are now very successful film producers. That’s the nature of the business."
As time went on, the story deviated ever further from the comics. Professor X could walk and there was no school. there was no school. Wolverine's adamantium skeleton was given to him after a car accident, and Jean Grey was replaced by a Japanese pop star named Yoshi to appeal to potential investors.
Orion ultimately filed for bankruptcy in 1991, and the X-Men movie rights were sold to Fox in the mid-1990s. While X-Men helped kick off the superhero movie boom in 2000, Fox's tenured superhero franchise recently flamed out at the box office with Dark Phoenix.
(Via Polygon)
Financial Failure Saved Fans From the Worst Possible X-Men Movie
by Eric Bartsch – on Jun 13, 2019
Decades before the first X-Men movie hit theaters, there were numerous attempts to being Marvel's Children of the Atom to the big screen. In the wake of Superman's box office success, one attempt to give Marvel's mutants a major motion picture almost happened in the 1980s.
With the help of Canadian animation studio Nelvana, Marvel's Stan Lee and Alice Donenfeld-Vernoux at Marvel tried to get a live-action X-Men movie made and secured a distribution deal with Orion Pictures. Hirsh brought on celebrated X-Scribe Chris Claremont to write two treatments, before two more veteran Marvel writers, Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway, joined the project.
While Orion was in the midst of a decades full of era-defining hits like The Terminator, First Blood and Robocop, the X-Men movie never made it past the script stage after Orion has a disastrous year in 1985, when only two of its 13 movies were profitable.
“Orion decided it wasn’t in their bailiwick. We lost the option and it went to Fox,” said explained Hirsh.
As a special-effects extravaganza based on a "niche" property, an X-Men movie wasn't considered a "sound investment" for Orion, which was well on its way to bankruptcy.
However, according to Conway, this X-Men movie was never going to be a Marvel masterpiece. Several drafts of the film featured Proteus as a villain, first as a comics-accurate body-possessing entity, then as a soul sucker and finally in the form of a vampiric CEO who drained life energy.
The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants would've shown up too as the Brotherhood. Dur to the producers' distaste for the word, the word "mutant'
Mutants were another matter. In the final draft, the word wasn't even used due to producers' interference and distaste for the term.
“I guarantee you that almost every change that’s made of that script that moves it away from the traditional X-Men mythology was something that was instigated by the producers,” said Conway, adding, "It was a disheartening experience working with amateurs who probably are now very successful film producers. That’s the nature of the business."
As time went on, the story deviated ever further from the comics. Professor X could walk and there was no school. there was no school. Wolverine's adamantium skeleton was given to him after a car accident, and Jean Grey was replaced by a Japanese pop star named Yoshi to appeal to potential investors.
Orion ultimately filed for bankruptcy in 1991, and the X-Men movie rights were sold to Fox in the mid-1990s. While X-Men helped kick off the superhero movie boom in 2000, Fox's tenured superhero franchise recently flamed out at the box office with Dark Phoenix.
(Via Polygon)