Vaughn signs on for X-Men: First Class

After having bailed on X-Men: The Last Stand — for reasons apparently to do with not having the time he felt he needed to make the movie he wanted to make — Kick-Ass director Matthew Vaughn has finally got his hands on an X-Men movie, signing on to make X-Men: First Class for Fox, who have already earmarked a June 2011 release date.

Back in early March, when I interviewed Vaughn for Time Out, I asked him whether he would ever consider directing a studio film again after the experience of making Kick-Ass independently. His answer was very interesting.

"I’m not saying I wouldn’t do a studio movie," he told me. "I’d do the right one. When I say the right one, if there was a story I was itching to tell and it was offered to me and I loved the script, yeah, I’d do a studio movie, but I’ve really had a good time making Kick-Ass and for me it’s important. I think I have the best job in the world in the sense that it’s exhausting but it doesn't feel like work, and most of the time it’s a very healthy stress — the stress that makes you feel alive and keeps you on your toes, it’s a positive stress.

"When I did Stardust there was a lot of negative stress, in the sense that I was fighting the studio for things that I so believed were right and [were] so obviously right. That was a weird thing, when you’re just trying to protect yourself from bad decisions that you’re going to get the blame for. That happened a lot on Stardust and I found that more exhausting than anything else.

"With Kick-Ass I didn’t have any of that madness to deal with, because we could all sit in a room and go what’s best for the movie, let’s go off and do it. I used to be very dismissive of a lot of directors thinking they were talentless and then I suddenly saw how the system works and there’s a reason why Spielberg and Lucas and Ridley Scott and Peter Jackson consistently make pretty good films — it’s because they’re allowed to do what they think is right. But you go down the next level of director and they’re movies made by committee and decisions being forced on them which everyone assumes the director made the decision but, boy, half the time they didn’t. It happened to me on Stardust, I had to cast someone I didn’t think was right for a role, still don’t when I watch the film, makes me feel sick. I keep going that person’s not bloody right for the role, wasn’t what I imagined it to be, but I got forced into casting that person."

Of course I asked Vaughn who that person was. And he told me. Off the record.