Before Kevin Feige was the president of Marvel Studios and was overseeing the Marvel Cinematic Universe that he played a huge role in creating, he worked with producer Lauren Shuler Donner on the early X-Men films for Fox. He worked his way up from an assistant to an associate producer when the X-Men made their big screen debut in 2000. By the time X2 was released Feige worked his way up to co-producer, and then served as executive producer on X-Men: The Last Stand.

Early on in the process of the development of these X-Men films, Feige worked with Donner on developing a plan on how the X-Men film franchise should play out. But, Fox didn't end up going with the plan they presented. During an interview with Vanity Fair, Donner expressed how proud she is of Feige and his accomplishments, and that's when she shared this little tidbit of information:

"When we were developing the X-Men movies, he and I had laid out a plan where the X-Menfranchise should go. Fox picked another route. I’m not surprised he kept that [comic book] aesthetic, and decided he would take the Marvel world and join them together and make five-year plan after five-year plan."

As you know, Feige went on to build Marvel Studio's where he took a risk to self-finance and produce their own films starting with Iron Man. It obviously paid off! He built something huge with Marvel's B-list characters. It's pretty amazing considering how we've seen these other studios struggling with making their A-list superhero characters work.

I wonder how things would have turned out if Fox would have actually developed his vision of the X-Men cinematic universe. In a way, I'm kinda glad that they passed on it because it drove him to create what he ended up creating.