The whole Marvel Cinematic Universe as we know it might have never happened if it weren't for ex-chairman and CEO of Fox Filmed Entertainment Bill Mechanic, as he says the studio never really believed in the first X-Men movie.
"They saw it and thought it was a disaster – why would anybody make a Marvel comic into a movie?" said Mechanic to Business Insider. Mechanic was dismissed from Fox just one month before the film hit screens in July 2000, but during his time there, he backed many movies that saw huge pushbacks from Fox, including David Fincher's Fight Club.
It looks like Fox ate their words as, according to BoxOfficeMojo, X-Men went on to gross $296.3 million worldwide at the box office, against its $57 million budget. The movie also kick-started the hugely successful X-Men franchise, which has earned close to $6 billion total to date. Just years after X-Men, Fox released X2, followed by many more sequels, prequels, and spin-offs centered around Hugh Jackman's Wolverine and Ryan Reynolds' Deadpool.
However, the X-Men film and TV rights moved to The Walt Disney Company and Marvel Studios in March 2019 as part of Disney's acquisition of Fox's entertainment assets. This ended the X-Men Fox era. Disney kick-started its X-Men journey with the animated TV show X-Men '97 in April 2024, followed by Deadpool and Wolverine in the summer of 2024, which saw Jackman and Reynolds' mutants join the MCU.
Even more Fox X-Men will make their MCU debuts in upcoming Marvel movie, Avengers: Doomsday, which is set to hit screens on December 18. The mutants set to appear are Patrick Stewart's Professor X, Ian McKellen's Magneto, James Marsden's Cyclops, Kelsey Grammer's Beast, Alan Cumming's Nightcrawler, Rebecca Romijn's Mystique, and Channing Tatum's Gambit.
Marvel and Disney also have a new X-Men movie in the works, scheduled for 2027.
For more, check out our guide on how to watch X-Men movies in order, and keep up with upcoming Marvel movies and shows for everything else the MCU has in store.
