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Bryan Singer Explains Hiring Matthew Vaughn for X-Men: First Class, Plus New International Trailer Shows Kevin Bacon's Powers

Director Matthew Vaughn's upcoming X-Men prequel, X-Men: First Class is counting down to competing in a loaded comic book movie summer, and has been getting the word out worldwide with two new international posters and a series of international trailers.

First Class producer Bryan Singer, who also created the movie's story, has also been active in the press rounds, telling UK site IGN why he made the decision to ignore the events of the First Class comic book and go even further in the past to the beginning of the friendship between Charles Xavier, a.k.a. Professor X (James McAvoy) and Erik Lensherr, a.k.a. Magneto (Michael Fassbender).

I knew that there was exploration of doing a movie based on the First Class comic book, but I thought that to earn that or to get there, it would be interesting to go back to the origin of the X-Men. The formation of the relationship and the schism between Xavier and Magneto. And yet I still liked the title First Class because it reflected that concept every bit as much as the comic it's based on, so I just decided that I would pursue that story of young Xavier and young Magneto but retain the title First Class as a sort of beginning of the X-Men and they could go from there.

Singer revealed that, despite taking First Class into the 1960s and using a (mostly) new group of mutants, the prequel will still link up to the X-Men trilogy.

I think the chronology works; there are some liberties, but for the most part, it makes sense. The characters make sense. Which is why Beast and Mystique were the only two I could bring back because you don't really know how old they are.

Singer was initially set to direct the movie, but ultimately had to back out. Singer called Vaughn "a terrific director" and explained how a natural disaster aided him in asking Vaughn to be his replacement.

I was committed to doing Jack the Giant Killer for Warners, and I also have a company and want to get more into producing. So I felt that this would be an opportunity to do that and put together a big movie. I've produced a number of things for television and smaller film stuff but nothing like this, so what better way to do it than with something I know, like X-Men. Then it was just a matter of finding a director, which was a stroke of complete good fortune, because of the volcano. He had been involved with X-Men 3 and then was not a part of it, so of all the directors we had on our lists — and we had hundreds of names — he was not on our list because we had already had that experience, and it didn't work out, so why would anyone think that either party would be interested again. And I had met Aaron Johnson, the star of Kick-Ass, the day before on a general meeting.

Then the next day, because of the volcano ash cloud, all the Brits that were in the United States could not fly home, so they all went out to Soho House for dinner, and I happened to be there with a friend of mine. And I saw Aaron Johnson, and he says, "Hey, how are you? Have you ever met Matthew Vaughn?" And although he had been involved in X-Men [3], I never had, so he introduced me to Matthew and he asked me about the new X-Men film. I was a little tipsy and I gave him the 20-minute idea and the next morning he texted me and I went over to his hotel and gave him the sober pitch, and in a matter of a couple of weeks he was onboard. And it was great because I was prepping Jack in London, so it enabled me to be there for both pictures last year.

Considering the amount of international trailers that have arrived recently for First Class, it shouldn't be a surprise that yet another international trailer has been released. While the trailer is almost identical to the previous trailer, it includes a brief sequence where Kevin Bacon, playing the movie's antagonist Sebastian Shaw, seems to catch a ball of fire in his hands.