Budgetary concerns kept Hank McCoy/Beast out of the initial live-action X-Men films, despite his character being part of this superhero group since its inception. Thankfully for comic book geeks everywhere, X-Men: The Last Stand corrected this erasure with the inspired casting of Kelsey Grammer as Beast. From there, Beast has been a constant presence in live-action X-Men movies, particularly with the Nicholas Hoult version of the character introduced in X-Men: First Class. Heck, Grammer’s Beast even became only the second X-Men movie character (following Patrick Stewart’s Charles Xavier) to appear on-screen in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, thanks to a mid-credits scene in The Marvels.
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Beast’s ubiquity, though, could’ve been increased even further in the 20th Century Fox era of mutant cinema. There were once plans to give this blue superhero a solo movie that would’ve finally let Beast take center stage. Though the production never materialized, X-Men: Fear the Beast is a fascinating “what if?” scenario reflecting a volatile era in X-Men cinema.
What Was X-Men: Fear the Beast?
John Ottman is most known for working as a film composer, a career that’s included multiple X-Men installments like X2 and X-Men: Days of Future Past. However, Ottman is also an editor, screenwriter, and director, and he would’ve possibly utilized all of those talents for a project focusing on Hank McCoy/Beast. Coinciding with Dark Phoenix’s release (and thus the demise of all future non-MCU X-Men movies), Ottman recalled to THR how his assistant Bryan Burton came up with an idea for a solo Beast movie.
Initially dubious of the notion, Ottman became enamored with Burton’s script and began pushing for it passionately. The gist of this feature would’ve been that Beast in the 1980s (presumably the Hoult version established in First Class) is torn between his most monstrous and human impulses. A potential friend, Dr. Paul Cartier, who also suffers from the same Beast-ly circumstances, turns out to be a nefarious foe Beast must stop. This situation would lead to Beast teaming up with Wolverine and both mutants putting their most monstrous tendencies to good use.
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This would’ve been a smaller-scale exercise in the vein of Logan, Deadpool, and The New Mutants, while everything about Beast’s storyline in Fear the Beast sounds reminiscent of classic werewolf stories. In the late 2010s, when Fox was enamored with giving X-Men characters like Gambit, Kitty Pryde, and Multiple Man solo movies, the idea of giving Beast his own motion picture didn’t sound so ludicrous. After all, this guy had already been in several First Class-era movies and was played by an acclaimed actor on the rise in popularity (Hoult). Why not hand this staple of X-Men stories a more modestly budgeted solo movie?
What Killed Fear the Beast?
In 2019, Ottman recalled that the biggest obstacle facing Fear the Beast was the approval of producer/writer Simon Kinberg, who was in charge of all things X-Men at Fox. Kinberg declined to read the project, allegedly because he didn’t want the screenplay to influence his own grand plans involving a new post-Hugh Jackman version of Wolverine. Even after this setback, Ottman still harbored ambitions of directing Fear the Beast if it ever got the green light, though that day never came. This proposed Beast movie stalled out after a first draft, thanks to the Disney/Fox merger.
Disney and Marvel Studios had their own X-Men plans and they certainly wouldn’t involve a Hank McCoy/Beast solo movie. With that, X-Men: Fear the Beast was dead, though nobody could be surprised at this outcome, especially given how the production never got very far. After all, that solo Gambit movie never got off the ground despite having a major star attached (Channing Tatum), and getting years of development including securing countless release dates. The significantly lower-profile X-Men: Fear the Beast was a no-brainer casualty in the corporate shenanigans that reset the X-Men movie franchise’s trajectory.
If nothing else, the very existence of Fear the Beast speaks to how much allure and power Beast has as a fictional character. Having existed in the comics for over 60 years, the dissonance between a big burly blue guy with the brain of an intellectual continues to captivate screenwriters and audiences alike. Given his enduring popularity, it was only inevitable that someone in Hollywood would try giving Beast his own solo movie. That kind of feat makes it inevitable that audiences haven’t seen the last of Beast on the silver screen, though it’s doubtful future appearances will involve Fear the Beast.
X-Men: The Last Stand and The Marvels are now streaming on Disney+.
