Simon Kinberg, while speaking to Collider has confirmed a piece from that HitFix casting report concerning Josh Boone’s New Mutants, revealing that Professor Charles Xavier is indeed wanted for the film.
“Right now, as the movie exists, Professor X would be a part of a New Mutants movie.”
HitFix originally reported that James McAvoy would be reprising the role in the film, along with Storm’s Alexandra Shipp. It’s been reported that both McAvoy and Michael Fassbender have extended their X-Men contracts with Fox, which leads us to believe that McAvoy’s Xavier will be in New Mutants.
Other additions to the cast include Maisie Williams and Anya Taylor-Joy in talks for the roles of Wolfsbane and Magik respectively, while other actors will be looked for the parts of Mirage, Sunspot, and Cannonball.
Williams, when asked about being apart of the film was quoted as saying “sign me up”.
Josh Boone recently confirmed on his Instagram account that alien member Warlock would also be apart of the lineup, hinting that cosmic threat The Phalanx Covenant could be the villains of the film. A collective of cybernetic alien beings able to assimilate organic and inorganic things, they eventually find their way to Earth.
The cosmic side of the X-Men has never been touch-upon even though a lot of storylines involved aliens and off-world adventures.
Kinberg recently mentioned that the next X-Men film would be set in the 1990’s, giving us the impression that this would indeed be New Mutants. As we’ve heard zero hints of another X-Men film in development other then New Mutants, Gambit, Deadpool 2 and X-Force.
The producer and writer would also reveal they are planning on shooting the film in early 2017, the assumption that the film could easily be ready for one of Fox’s 2018 release date spots saved for Marvel projects.
It’s looking like the release order will now be Wolverine 3, Gambit, New Mutants, Deadpool 2 and then possibly X-Force.
I’ve been told repeatedly by peers and my own source at Fox that New Mutants has been priority for quite some time, and would in fact go into production before either Deadpool 2 or X-Force. This is just further confirmation of previous claims I’ve made on Twitter over the past couple of months.
I wouldn’t be entirely shocked if we saw New Mutants ready for January 12th, 2018 or July 13th, 2018, release dates already set aside by Fox for unnamed future Marvel projects.
SOURCE: COLLIDER