It's no secret that the comic book genre is wildly popular, but there was a time when this wasn't the case. Before share universes like the MCU (which is streaming with a Disney+ subscription) there was Bryan Singer's 2000 X-Men movie. Bill Mechanic was the chairman and CEO of Fox Filmed Entertainment at the time, and recently revealed some wild feedback about the movie he got from execs. And I can't stop laughing given what we know now about the genre.
Fans who spent years watching the Marvel movies in order will recall that The X-Men movies came about before shared universes were commonplace, and they were a huge gamble. After all, the movies were expensive and had the herculean task of bringing the comics to life. In an interview with Business Insider, Mechanic revealed how folks from Fox originally responded to the project, offering:
They saw it and thought it was a disaster — why would anybody make a Marvel comic into a movie?
Pardon me while I LOL. Because as we know, there have been a ton of Marvel movies in the decades since X-Men was released, including the 37 titles that have come out of the MCU (so far). So the answer is to that question about "why" is very clear: because audiences would eat it right up. The shared universe has given of signs of slowing down, with a number upcoming Marvel movies arriving this year including Spider-Man: Brand New Day and Avengers: Doomsday.
In the end the X-Men franchise would keep going for nearly two decades, with the final chapter being Simon Kinberg's Dark Phoenix in 2019. Clearly the OG movie's haters were wrong, and they learned their lesson now that superhero projects are all over both TV and film.
For years fans lamented that the X-Men were noticeably missing from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but luckily that changed. After Disney acquired 20th Century Fox and its properties, the door was finally open for both mutants and the Fantastic Four to finally make their way over. A number of OG X-Men stars will soon reprise their roles as part of the Avengers: Doomsday cast, in addition to the developing movie coming from Jake Schreier. So Bill Mechanic definitely got the last laugh.
The X-Men movies are streaming in their entirety on Disney+, and Avengers: Doomsday will hit theaters on December 18th as part of the 2026 movie release list. Hopefully we get news about the developing X-Men movie sooner rather than later.
