No Renaissance court could rival Hollywood for rumour and intrigue. And while, as far as we know, the actual poignards to the kidneys and cases of poisoning are few and far between, give or take the odd actress in the sunset of their youthful beauty who take one too many stabs of the Botox needle to the face, and consequently need an industrial sized winch to crack a smile, it can be a brutal business.

Sure, there's the glitz and glamour and red carpets. But you're just as likely to work your heart out on some project for several years, only to pick up the paper one day and read in the gossip column that the lower back pain you'd woken up with was actually the imprint of some studio Grand Poobah giving you the boot out the door.

One person who knows this only all too well, is Joss Whedon, the one time wunderkind who could do no wrong. Once there was the television show "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", and it was good. Then there was the spin-off "Angel", and it was perhaps even better. But the bean counters started growing restless, asking when all this quality would translate into quantity, as in loads and loads of cash. And then there was the Sci Fi Western "Firefly", and the cognoscenti and critics said it was all good. So Fox canceled it (though it did get an eventual finale in "Serenty").

By this time Whedon had had his fill of the television two-step, and was ready to move on to bigger (and better?) things in Hollywood proper. And for a while it looked like he was headed for the big time with a booster rocket. The wave of comic book adaptations, which had made a star director out of shoe box budget lo-fi horror maker Sam Raimi with the Spiderman franchise still looked like money in the bank. And who better than the creator of Buffy, one of the most kick-ass female bad guy busters of all time, to take on the job of bringing "Wonder Woman" to box office glory?

He got the job. He got to work. And then six months went by. But after all, what's six months in film production? A year passed. And a year and a half. By now people were starting to ask questions, which brings us back to rumours, ugly rumours. Then, two years into the project the news comes down that The Powers That Be in their inscrutable wisdom had decided that they weren't too keen on Whedon making the film after all. The roller-coaster had come to a full ground stop, and Whedon was ordered out.

But there is always, if not a second, and third, act in Hollywood, then at least the rumours of said comebacks. Even those of us who try to keep on top of these things have a hard time keeping up with who's in, who's out, who started that credible rumour, which turned out to be bogus, and where that totally far fetched one, that turned out to be true, came from.

Yes, there has been scuttlebutt going around that the third, and suposedly final, chapter of the X-Men saga might not be so final after all. But the little birdy in the know neglected to land on our shoulder and inform us that someone somewhere is talking about Joss Whedon directing "X-Men 4", in fact, it seems to have given Whedon himself a miss as well.

Paul Florez of Wizard Magazine was the one to inform Whedon during an interview of his alleged new gig.

Joss Whedon

WIZARD: There’s a rumor swirling that you’re going to write and direct an “X-Men 4” movie. Care to comment?

WHEDON: I haven’t heard the rumor, but there is no rumor that is not swirling. I don’t even know, are they even going to have an “X4”? I had been talking with [Marvel Studios] about “X3,” but the dates didn’t line up. So I took on “Wonder Woman,” and that worked out great! Oh, no wait, I remember now, not so much.

Yeah, I haven’t heard anything about “X4.” You know, the problem with the big superhero movies is there are so many hands [involved], but I really respect [Marvel Studios President of Production] Kevin Feige if they make something like that. You know they’re actually going to make it as opposed to something that’s in limbo. And you know I do love the characters. I wouldn’t say never. But right now, I’m interested in doing “Goners,” which is my own thing, as opposed to somebody else’s. I find that doing someone else’s thing is not working out so well for me—anywhere but in the word of actual comics

Now, this rumour needs as much salt to make it edible that it would impact the futures market in sodium chloride. But considering the sterling work Whedon has done writing the actual X-Men comic book, they could hardly find a better man for the job, short of making peace with Bryan Singer.

The first X-Men movie was quite good. The second was even better. But it was the very end of it that raised hopes that the series would end on a real high note.

Just prior the the rolling of the credits in "X-Men II: X-Men United ", the mood is somber in mutantville. Everyone believes Jean Grey to be dead. Then the scene cuts to the lake where she supposedly drowned, and for a brief moment you can just make out the outline of a fiery bird beneath the dark waters. The end.

Now despite growing up on a steady diet of comic books, I'm less enthused by the string of adaptations that has flooded the market in recent years than most members of the movie going public. It's not that I take the snooty attitude that comic books are too low-brow to be worthy material for adaption to film. It's rather the other way around.

There are some cracking good stories to be mined in them thar comic book hills. And one would have thought the job of turning them into good movies would be even more straight forward than most. It is after all a visual medium. You've basically got your script already story-boarded. Hire a proficient director who respects the material, some adequate actors and technicians, and Bob's your uncle!

But no, there's not a thing Hollywood studio Grand Poobahs feel they can't improve on. The first two "X-Men" films were better than the bulk of such ventures, but did have the feel of prequels working up to something grander. And when I saw that fiery bird under the water, my first reaction was to run over to the bookshelf and pull out my old copies of the Dark Phoenix saga from the 80s. The third film was going to be the apotheosis of comic book movies thus far. I was sure of it. I was dead wrong.

First off, Singer accepted the job of helming the new Superman movie for a rival studio. 20th Century Fox promptly replaced him in the director's chair with Brett Ratner. A pity, but not fatal in and of itself. But then rumours started surfacing, like an ugly charred turkey from the depths of the Hollywood pond, that the script was less than awe inspiring. Dark Phoenix was in there, but more as as an afterthought, in a story centred on a cure for mutants. Further rumours did little to raise morale.

And then the film was released. And despite doing rather boffo box-office, it was an artistic mutant of the Chernobyl kind. Could Whedon put the franchise back on track? Or would it take a long fallow period followed by a reboot, like Christopher Nolan did with "Batman Begins" after Joel Schumacher had put the big stink on the Batman franchise in the mid '90s? Stay tuned for the rumours.