Vaughn recounted an experience that stuck with him and shaped his views on Hollywood. He walked into an executive’s office and saw an “X-Men: The Last Stand” script that was “a lot fatter” than the draft he was familiar with. Though told not to worry about it, he read it anyway, being a director who felt he had to worry about it.
“He wouldn’t tell me, so I grabbed it literally — it was like a crazy moment — opened the first page, it said, ‘Africa. Storm. Kids dying of no water. She creates a thunderstorm that saves the children.’ I’m like ‘Okay, pretty cool idea. What is this?’ He [the executive] said, ‘It’s Halle Berry’s script.’ I [said], ‘Okay, she hasn’t signed up yet.’ ‘[It’s] what she wants it to be … once she signs up, we’ll throw it in the bin.’ Wow, you’re going to do that to an Oscar-winning actress playing Storm?’ So I quit, at that point, because I thought, ‘I’m mincemeat.'”
Brett Ratner ended up taking over as director, and Vaughn reflected that this incident drove him to think, “Hollywood, they do some stuff well, but not in my style.” He would later direct the 2011 movie “X-Men: First Class.” Though Vaughn would have directed the following 2014 “X-Men: Days of Future Past,” he explained that he didn’t because “Hollywood forgot to tell me, after I wrote the damn thing, that legally Bryan [Singer] got to direct it first. I went, ‘You know what, I’m not mucking around with Hollywood anymore. I’m going to do ‘Kingsman.'”