Ex-Fox Boss Called Hugh Jackman’s X-Men a Disaster — Then It Changed Hollywood

Here’s a little movie industry time-capsule for you: back when Fox was first cooking up what would become the X-Men franchise, some of the highest people at the company were apparently convinced the whole thing was a disaster in the making. No, really.

'Why would anybody make a Marvel comic into a movie?'

Bill Mechanic, who ran Fox Filmed Entertainment from 1994 to 2000 (meaning, yes, during Die Hard with a Vengeance, Independence Day, and Titanic), has been talking about the mood inside Fox in those years. To hear him tell it, the enthusiasm from the big bosses—meaning Rupert Murdoch and other execs—for a Hugh Jackman-headlined X-Men movie was essentially zero. The direct quote from Mechanic:

'They saw it and thought it was a disaster—why would anybody make a Marvel comic into a movie?'

This came up while Mechanic was out there discussing the upcoming re-release of Fight Club (because the early 2000s will never die), but it seems he couldn’t resist bringing up just how little faith the Fox ownership had in mutant superheroes.

Murdoch vs. Mechanic

For a little background: Fox was part of News Corporation back then, with Murdoch calling the shots. Mechanic’s relationship with the studio’s parent company sounds like it fell somewhere between ‘strained’ and ‘oil-and-water.’

• Mechanic says Murdoch just didn’t see movies as a place for risks or challenging ideas—‘I always thought what Rupert wanted was Page Six. He didn’t think movies were there to challenge.’
• During one infamous meeting about Fight Club: Murdoch supposedly burst out with ‘What kind of sick f***ing human being would make a movie like this?’ (Yes, that’s a real quote. You can practically hear the boardroom go silent.)
• X-Men hit theaters just after Mechanic was out the door, but obviously, the movie not only made money—it set off a chain reaction that gave us multiple sequels and spin-offs, not to mention putting Hugh Jackman on the map.

So, in a twist, the so-called ‘disaster’ became the foundation of the modern superhero blockbuster era. Moral of the story: sometimes the suits don’t know what’ll work, and sometimes, audiences just want mutants in spandex.