Bryan Singer Didn’t Allow X-Men Comics On ‘X-Men’ Set – But Kevin Feige Gave Them To Hugh Jackman Anyway
By Ben Pearson/Nov. 28, 2018 1:00 pm EST
But while contemporary comic book movies are often expected to at least pretend to show reverence for their source material, back then, Singer took a different approach: he banned X-Men comics from the set of his movie altogether.
In an interview with MTV News, Logan/Wolverine actor Hugh Jackman revealed the somewhat surprising piece of trivia about Singer’s insistence on keeping the X-Men movie set free of comics:
That first X-Men movie clearly didn’t have a huge budget, so it makes sense that Singer would try to strip things down and concentrate on the characters and the drama rather than huge VFX-heavy set pieces. But banning comics on the set? That seems like the type of bullshit Hollywood power move designed to serve someone’s ego instead of to actually improve the movie everyone was making. It’s also incredibly elitist: in Singer’s mind, he and maybe a select few others on the filmmaking team were the only ones who truly understood the comics, and instead of answering questions people may have had about the characterizations, he decided to play gatekeeper.
It also sounds like those who risked Singer’s wrath to break the rules and pass Jackman a few comics weren’t able to give him enough, so he went to a different source to get his fix: a man who was then just an associate producer at Marvel Entertainment:
“I would go into [eventual Marvel Studios president] Kevin Feige’s office, and it was wall-to-wall – not only comics all over the wall, like posters, but about 600 figurines of different characters. And I’d be like, ‘What should I read?’ And he’d say, ‘You’ve gotta read this one. And you’ve gotta read the Japan. And you’ve gotta read the origins.’ So he was slipping me stuff, and we’ve stayed friends ever since.”
