X-Men editor John Ottman shares abandoned script centered on Beast

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Despite the countless number of mutants to call themselves X-Men, the only two who were ever given their own film in the franchise are Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds). It's not for lack of trying, but every other X-MEN spin-off wound up stuck in development hell (looking at you, Gambit), including a potential film centered around Beast (Nicholas Hoult).

John Ottman, who edited and scored X2, X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST, and X-MEN: APOCALYPSE, recently revealed to THR that he developed a Beast-centric X-MEN spin-off. While Ottman was finishing off work on APOCALYPSE, his then-assistant Byron Burton approached him with the idea of a Beast spin-off, saying that he could crank out a script in two weeks. "I said, 'Knock yourself out, but just know there's a 95 percent chance no one is ever going to make this,'" Ottman told THR. The editor/composer was skeptical, but after reading Burton's draft, he came to believe that a Beast movie could actually work. He began developing the project himself and making tweaks to the script, but at the end of the day, it just didn't happen. As the X-MEN franchise has now come to a close at Fox (with the exception of THE NEW MUTANTS), Ottman and Burton have released an early draft of FEAR THE BEAST. You can check that out right here.

The film opens in an Inuit village which is being stalked by a mysterious creature. "We wanted to have the tenor of John Carpenter's The Thing where you are in this inhospitable environment," said Ottman. Hank McCoy is keeping his mutation in check thanks to his special serum, but very nearly loses control during an exercise in the Danger Room. We also learn that McCoy has been helping fellow scientist Dr. Paul Cartier with a similar mutation and has been providing him with samples of the serum. When things take a terrible turn and Dr. Cartier is transformed into the Wendigo, Hank goes after the man and even teams up with Wolverine, who Professor X has tracked down using Cerebro. Following the grand showdown, FEAR THE BEAST ends with the reveal of the villain Mr. Sinister. "The idea was we would have Sinister as this multi-film villain orchestrating things," said Burton. "We wrote a late-'80s outline of an Omega Red film where the idea is Sinister is testing the X-Men." As John Ottman and Byron Burton released this early draft for fun, they hope that it will be judged as such. If the film had moved forward, it likely would have changed considerably.

As the film made use of several main X-MEN characters, Fox told Ottman that franchise architect Simon Kinberg would need to sign off on it. However, Kinberg declined to read the script as he didn't want to become influenced by it. As Kinberg was considering reintroducing Wolverine back into the X-MEN after Hugh Jackman had hung up the claws, he also felt that the use of Wolverine in any other movie might be confusing.