The most recent news concerning X-MEN: APOCALYPSE is that Bryan Singer will be returning to direct, and that’s great to hear for most people I imagine. What’s hard to imagine is how they plan on topping themselves this time around; they certainly have various cast and timeline options to play with which might help. Writers Simon Kinberg (DAYS OF FUTURE PAST) and Dan Harris and Michael Dougherty (X2) are currently working on the script with filming is scheduled to begin next spring for a May 27, 2016 release.
With promotion for the upcoming Blu-ray release (such as this viral video) of DOFP, Kinberg answered a number of fan questions about the franchise. He touched on “completing the trilogy” and having to cast some younger X-Men.
Kinberg talked to Yahoo! Movies UK about the direction of the upcoming sequel:
“The thrust of Apocalypse is really to complete the trilogy we began with First Class – to complete the stories of young Raven, young Hank, younger Charles and Erik. And complete this trilogy of four people who began the films sort of disparate and in different worlds…[and who] we’ve followed through the span of decades. So that’ll be the thrust. There will be familiar characters and new characters that we haven’t seen…ever…but it’ll be the completion of what we began in First Class.”
On casting of younger X-Men (if they were to appear):
“If we included some of the original X-Men, like Storm, Jean, Scott and others in Apocalypse, yeah we would have to recast them because Apocalypse takes place a good 20 years before X1 which now insanely is 10-15 years ago. It would be very hard to do. Halle [Berry], Famke [Janssen] and James [Marsden] have done such a wonderful job bringing those characters to life and have been so identified with the parts. It would be a tall task, but I also would’ve said before First Class that there was no way we’d find actors to stand alongside Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, and we did with Michael [Fassbender] and James [McAvoy]. Are we going to have to recast? If some of characters are in the movie, we would. But we shall wait and see.”
Kinberg also confirmed what many already assumed, that times have changed:
“We changed the timeline for everything that came after DOFP – so X-Men 1, 2 and 3, even The Wolverine. So Jean [Grey] was not killed in Last Stand, nor was Scott, and a whole lot of other things rippled.”
X-MEN: APOCALYPSE is said to take place in the 1980s and will focus mainly on the First Class and Wolverine. We have seen Erik’s story and Charles’ story, who would you like to see the main focus on this time? More Jennifer Lawrence never hurt anyone, just saying.
The comment section exists to allow readers to discuss the article constructively and respectfully, focused on the topic at hand.
What’s Not Allowed