Brett Ratner finally gets his 'X-Men'

Posted Tuesday, June 7, 2005 at 4:50 PM Central

by John Couture

Six years ago, 20th Century Fox chased a hot new director, who had just converted Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan into household names with Rush Hour, to head up a movie inspired by the X-Men comic book. Ultimately, Fox chose to go with Bryan Singer and Brett Ratner returned to his Rush Hour series and made another successful movie.

As we reported last week, Matthew Vaughn pulled out of X-Men 3 because of family concerns, leaving Fox scrambling for a replacement. Fox went back to the beginning and scooped up Ratner to helm the latest installment of the mutant superhero franchise.

The hiring of Ratner is even more ironic since Bryan Singer pulled out of X-Men 3 to direct Superman Lives, a movie that had Ratner attached to direct it for years until he pulled out after not being able to find a leading man.

X-Men 3 will start production on time and is still slated for a May 26, 2006 release. Ratner's other big movie Rush Hour 3 has been pushed back a year to accomodate the new project.