 In 2009, Ian McKellen confirmed that he would not be reprising his role as Magneto in the Origins movie citing his age, and Shuler Donner stated that the movie might never be made, stating it was "at the back of the queue" in the studio's priorities. Both Donner and Bryan Singer have stated that Magneto would not be produced as the plot of X-Men: First Class "superseded" the story of the planned film. Singer denied using Sheldon Turner's script for Magneto as inspiration to write his draft of First Class, but the Writer's Guild of America arbitration still credited Turner for the film's story, while Moss and Schwartz's collaborations ended up uncredited. Singer set the film in a period where Xavier and Magneto were in their twenties, and seeing that it was during the 1960s, added the Cuban Missile Crisis as a backdrop, considering it would be interesting to "discuss this contemporary concept in a historical context". Shuler Donner suggested the Hellfire Club as the villains.
