There’s been a lot of movement with regards to Bryan Singer‘s return to the X-Men franchise with X-Men: Days of Future Past as of late. It began a couple days ago when Singer was speaking with MTV about his upcoming film Jack the Giant Slayer and the potential of incorporating some of the CG work used in that film into the X-Men feature.
Singer told the site, “A CG Nicholas Hoult [who plays Beast] or a CG Ewan McGregor, maybe 20 years from now might be perfect, but it’s a little tough on the eyes when it’s not real. I definitely want to use this technology again, and I might even be using some of it in a different way in X-Men. I don’t want to say how, yet, but I’m definitely using some of this technology on X-Men, which I never used in any of the other X-Men films.”
The technology conversation continued with Cinema Blend when Singer told the site he’d be shooting the film in native 3-D rather than post-converting. “I’ll probably use some of the motion-capture technology for certain things,” he said. “And of course the 3D technology. I’ll be shooting native stereo on X-Men.”
He also expanded on what we can expect from the story and not being a comic book reader I’m not familiar with Chris Claremont’s “Days of Future Past” series, which is described by Wikipedia as follows:
The storyline alternates between present day, in which the X-Men fight Mystique’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, and a future timeline caused by the X-Men’s failure to prevent the Brotherhood from assassinating Senator Robert Kelly. In this future universe, Sentinels rule the United States, and mutants live in internment camps. The present-day X-Men are forewarned of the possible future by a future version of their teammate Kitty Pryde, whose mind traveled back in time and possessed her younger self to warn the X-Men. She succeeds in her mission and returns to the future, but despite her success, the future timeline still exists as an alternative timeline rather than as the actual future.
Singer adds to that saying, “There’s things that we’re going to do in this movie that haven’t been done in X-Men films before. Stuff involving [time travel], and stuff involving certain technology, and certain science fiction aspects that haven’t been used before in an X-Men film. We’d like to keep some of that a surprise.”
Of course, that won’t stop fan speculation, which has already involved whether or not certain characters will or won’t return. We already know original X-Men alums such as Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Anna Paquin, Ellen Page and Shawn Ashmore will be back along with First Class stars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence and Nicholas Hoult, but what about Halle Berry? Will she reprise her role as Storm?
As part of his interview with MTV Singer added, “I can’t say [whether Storm will be in the film or not]. I don’t know yet. And it’s not necessarily a deal making aspect at all. I want to make sure it’ll make sense. But I love working with her.”
One name I can tell you will be joining the cast as an all new member is Peter Dinklage (“Game of Thrones”), which Singer announced on Twitter. He didn’t specify a character, but fan speculation is already turning to a character named Puck, a member of the Marvel superhero team Alpha Flight described as “Canada’s answer to the Avengers.” Could this be Fox’s way of trying to start their own superhero spin-offs?
Speaking of spin-offs, Hugh Jackman is done filming The Wolverine (7/26) and recently told The Hollywood Reporter it was while he was filming that he learned of Days of Future Past.
“[I] first heard about it around October or November [2012]. I was literally finishing The Wolverine and dreaming about lasagna, and about three weeks before the end, they told me,” he said and as far as getting back together with old cast mates after two solo Wolverine films he said, “There was no way I was not going to be part of that.”
X-Men: Days of Future Past begins filming in mid-April in Montreal and will hit theaters on July 18, 2014.
