Brian Cox talked about working with the currently embattled X-Men 2 director Bryan Singer, who has since taken a lot of public heat for his abusive on-set behaviour and predatory actions toward younger male members of his productions.
It’s not easy mounting a big-screen comic book adaptation. Before Blade and X-Men hit big, audiences had suffered through Batman & Robbin, Steel, and Spawn, to name a few of the 1990's mangled attempts at putting superheroes on the marketing map (ironically, it was only 1997’s Men in Black that created a mini-franchise). And as a guy new to making spectacle movies, Singer didn’t have it easy, according to X-2 and Succession star Cox.
During an interview with Yahoo! Entertainment, Cox said he would always be grateful to the director for waiting out the studio and getting Cox aboard the production. Cox avoided discussing the director’s behaviour that his fellow co-stars had noted and didn’t refute their claims either. In fact, despite saying that Singer was “under a lot of strain,” the actor spent as much time talking about what he would do if Disney offered him a comeback tour for a film, especially since his finale saw him chained to a wall waiting for a massive flood. “The last time I played him I was tied up to a wall waiting for a huge flood to come, so I don't remember where he is now," Cox said. "I'm either floating around somewhere in Canada or I'm dead! So I could come back as a ghost or as a somewhat washed-out William Stryker."
Singer is the one-time wunderkind who’s since taken a lot of well-deserved public heat for his predatory behaviour toward his younger male actors and his abusive directorial style, one that once saw Halle Berry telling him to “Kiss my Black @$$” and has many of her other co-stars only mumbling about the guy if they have anything to say at all. Cox, who played Wolverine's (Hugh Jackman) creator, William Stryker, in X-2, offered a half-hearted defence of the kind of immense strain he saw the man under while working on mega-budgeted (for the time) star-studded comic book flicks. That the director fought to get the first on-screen Hannibal Lecter (In Michael Mann's 1986 adaptation of Red Dragon titled Manhunter) helps Cox's fuzzier feelings.
Since Singer's last hurrah on the franchise, 2016’s critically and fan-hated X-Men: Apocalypse featuring Oscar Isaac as the villain, the director has been embroiled in several lawsuits and allegations. Fans have been hoping for Kevin Feige to start doing something with the mutants since Fox mangled many X-Men projects that could have launched their own MCU-style franchise. However, all that’s happening so far are cameos like Hugh Jackman's reprisal of Wolverine in the upcoming Deadpool 3. If Cox returns, it will be anyone’s guess, but there’s bound to be another X-Men movie (with or without him) sooner or later.
The X-Men franchise is streaming on Disney Plus.
Source: Yahoo! Entertainment
