X-Men: Days Of Future Past is a raging success. It’s brought in almost two hundred million dollars at the domestic box office and has already pushed past six hundred million dollars when you take into account international grosses. As such, you would think Bryan Singer would be a slam dunk to return for the follow-up, X-Men: Apocalypse. In fact, he’s already been announced as the helmer, but thanks to the hideous allegations he’s been publicly accused of, it might be a bit less of a sure thing than we would normally think.
Callous as this might sound, the issue in play here is less Bryan Singer’s guilt or innocence and more his time. Rumors have been swirling for awhile that the director will be able to provide irrefutable proof that he wasn’t in Hawaii when the abuse allegedly occurred and that he was at the London Superman Returns premiere when the other incident allegedly happened. As such, FOX executives are reportedly comfortable with continuing from an ethical standpoint, but with hundreds of millions of dollars in play, they might not be comfortable with all the time he could potentially miss cleaning this mess up.
According to Radar Online, the primary issue is whether or not production would have to be delayed in order to sort out the legal problems before moving forward. X-Men: Apocalypse is currently shooting for a 2016 release date. That means it’s in better shape than say Ant-Man, but it still needs to get on its horse and go before wasting too much time.
Now, because of how much Bryan Singer has meant to the X-Men franchise and just how much people loved X-Men: Days Of Future Past, the worst case scenario here isn’t that Fox severs its relationship with the director and he has nothing to do with the movie. Instead, it would likely be that he’s pushed back to a producer’s role and allowed to have heavy input on whoever might replace him. That prospect allegedly isn’t sitting too well with the visionary, but that shouldn’t come as a surprise. People who are really good at their jobs would almost always rather actually do them then get paid to do less.
In all likelihood, this legal mess will sort itself out and FOX will stick with Bryan Singer, though perhaps on a far tighter schedule. If someone else comes forward to file a claim or there’s enough legal wrangling, however, it’s entirely possible we could see someone else helm X-Men: Apocalypse. We will keep you updated.
