Director Bryan Singer, who masterminded a masterful social media campaign for his upcoming X-Men: Days of Future Past film, will not take part in any publicity events or press screenings for DOFP, which is slated to open in just a few weeks on May 23rd, 2014.  Singer’s departure from his normally robust publicity role for the films he directs is just the latest ripple effect from a lawsuit filed against the director alleging that Singer abused an underage boy back in 1999 (see "Sexual Abuse Lawsuit Targets 'X-Men' Director").
 
On Friday it was announced that Singer was not going to participate in events at WonderCon this weekend, and that DOFP screenwriter Simon Kinberg would be filling in for Singer at a scheduled WonderCon press conference and in interviews (see "Singer Pulls Out of WonderCon").  Buzzfeed, which is reporting that Singer won’t be participating in Days of Future Past publicity, also broke the story that ABC is removing Singer’s name from promos from Black Box, the upcoming TV series about a bipolar neuroscientist, which Singer exec produced.

Deadline reports that Fox scheduled the speakers during its WonderCon panel in such a way that the studio was able to avoid having Simon Kinberg, who was filling in for Singer, answer questions from the audience.  Kinberg showed a clip from the film that was previously shown on the MTV Movie Awards show last weekend.  Fox did not remove Singer’s name from the clip and, according to Deadline, the crowd at WonderCon didn’t react one way or the other to Singer’s name.
 
In spite of the lack of a kerfuffle among the committed at WonderCon, the timing of the lawsuit couldn’t be worse for Fox, which has sunk $200 million into X-Men: Days of Future Past and badly needs the film to become a major hit and revitalize the X-Men movie franchise.  Though the X-Men comic books were dominant in the comic market in the 1980s and 1990s, the X-Men property has never enjoyed the kind of major success on screen that other Marvel franchises like Spider-Man, Iron Man, and The Avengers have scored.  In Days of Future Past it appeared that Fox and Singer might have found the powerful narrative and exciting mix of X-Men characters that could propel the film towards (and maybe even past) the $1 billion mark in global sales that is the new benchmark for "boffo" in Tinseltown.  Will the scandal have an effect on box office for DOFP, or will Singer and Fox be able to refute or otherwise defuse the allegations in suit?