Photo by Maximilian Bühn (CC BY-SA)
The Lowdown
Fans spent years insisting there was only one possible Professor X. According to a story Coming Attractions founder Patrick Sauriol has now shared, that chorus may have been worth real money: he says he was told Patrick Stewart’s agent waved a Wizard magazine and a printout of Sauriol’s own site at Fox to win the actor his asking price (Sauriol on Facebook). It is a secondhand tale, and Sauriol presents it that way, but it is a fun reminder of how early movie websites started to matter.
Key Takeaways
- Patrick Sauriol, who launched the Coming Attractions movie-news site in 1995, posted the anecdote on Facebook on Oct. 29, the day after Stewart’s death (Sauriol on Facebook; Sauriol’s LinkedIn).
- He says he heard it secondhand from someone in Hollywood: around 1998, Fox pushed back on Stewart’s fee and floated other actors for Professor X, with John Malkovich’s name coming up (Sauriol on Facebook).
- By Sauriol’s account, Stewart’s agent answered by producing a Wizard “Casting Call” feature and a Coming Attractions page that both said the role had to be Stewart’s, and Stewart got his number (Sauriol on Facebook).
- Sauriol calls Bill Mechanic Fox’s “president of production.” At the time Mechanic was actually chairman and CEO of Fox Filmed Entertainment, the studio’s top film job (Variety; Los Angeles Times).
Patrick Sauriol on Facebook · October 29, 2026
The Story
Sauriol opened by saying he never met Stewart and that the story reached him “in passing” from a man who works in Hollywood. He says it has stuck with him ever since as a lesson in the business side of show business, and he waited until after Stewart’s death to tell it (Sauriol on Facebook).
As he tells it, the meeting took place around 1998, while X-Men was still in development and Fox was in early talks with Stewart about playing Charles Xavier. When the conversation turned to money, the studio wanted to pay less than Stewart was asking, and the executive argued that plenty of other bald, middle-aged actors could do the part. Malkovich was the name Sauriol says was dropped in the room (Sauriol on Facebook).
That is when, according to Sauriol, Stewart’s agent reached into a briefcase and pulled out two exhibits: a copy of Wizard and a printed Coming Attractions page about the X-Men movie. Both had made the same case, that Professor X should be Stewart and nobody else. “Stewart got his asking price, Fox got a new film franchise,” Sauriol wrote (Sauriol on Facebook).
None of the people in the room have confirmed the story publicly, and Sauriol does not claim to have witnessed it. What can be checked lines up with the setting he describes. Coming Attractions had been tracking X-Men since 1996, and Salon wrote in 2000 that Sauriol eventually built 11 archives and more than 100 pages of coverage on the film (Salon). Wizard’s first X-Men “Casting Call” ran in 1995 and already had Stewart as Xavier, and the page Sauriol shared shows a later edition of the feature making the same pick (Tangential Giants; Sauriol on Facebook).
A Dune joke and a Wizard shout-out
Sauriol signed off by saying he was glad to have helped get a paycheck to “the best movie version of Gurney Halleck,” a nod to Stewart’s role in David Lynch’s 1984 Dune (Sauriol on Facebook; The Hollywood Reporter). He also tagged Andrew Kardon, a longtime Wizard editor, since the magazine’s casting call was the agent’s other piece of evidence (Sauriol on Facebook; Kardon; The Wizard Files).
The post, which includes a scan of Wizard’s Professor X pick, has been making the rounds with movie and comics fans, drawing more than 280 reactions and 40 shares (Sauriol on Facebook).
The Background
Mechanic joined 20th Century Fox in 1993 as president and chief operating officer, was promoted to chairman and CEO of Fox Filmed Entertainment in December 1996, and left the studio in June 2000, weeks before X-Men opened (Variety; Los Angeles Times; EW). After X-Men’s $54.4 million opening weekend, the Los Angeles Times gave Mechanic, a self-described comic-book fan, the major credit for getting the movie made. The same story quoted Fox’s marketing president saying it was the first time the studio’s exit polls showed a movie influenced as much by the internet as by newspapers (Los Angeles Times).
X-Men opened in U.S. theaters on July 14, 2000, on a $75 million budget and earned $296.3 million worldwide, launching a franchise Stewart returned to for more than two decades (Box Office Mojo). Salon noted at the time that its two biggest names, Stewart and Ian McKellen, were “hardly high-paid matinee idols” (Salon).
Stewart died on Oct. 28, 2026, at 86. Read our full Patrick Stewart obituary and tributes, his Who’s Who profile, and how Avengers: Doomsday became his final on-screen role.
Latest News
Related
People in This Story
Bios from PCP’s Who’s Who. Tap a name for the full profile.
Actor · Stage & Screen
English stage and screen actor who led Star Trek: The Next Generation as Captain Jean-Luc Picard and played Professor Charles Xavier across the X-Men films.
Actor · Voice Actor
British actor who plays Erik Lehnsherr / Magneto in Avengers: Doomsday (2026). Credits also include The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002).
Join the Conversation
Coming soon.
More Context
- Patrick Sauriol on Facebook — Patrick Sauriol’s post about Patrick Stewart and X-Men ↗
- Salon — The “X-Men” crusheth ↗
- Variety — Mechanic Tools to the Top (1996) ↗
- Los Angeles Times — Mechanic Takes Helm at Fox Film Unit (1996) ↗
- Los Angeles Times — ‘X’-Movie Chief Mechanic a Marvel for Fox (2000) ↗
- Entertainment Weekly — The chair of Fox Filmed Entertainment steps down (2000) ↗
- Box Office Mojo — X-Men (2000) ↗
- Tangential Giants — A review of Wizard’s 1995 X-Men predictions ↗
- Andrew Kardon, MommysBusy — Wizard Magazine, Dee Snider, Mark Hamill and Me ↗
- The Hollywood Reporter — Patrick Stewart Had No Clue Who Sting Was When They Worked Together on ‘Dune’ ↗