X-MEN: APOCALYPSE Producer Hints At Return Of Original Cast

By Adam Holmes on Monday, May 26th, 2014

One of the selling points of this weekend’s box-office smash X-Men: Days of Future Past was its combination of the First Class cast and the cast of the original movies. While I won’t spoil the specific details of the film (although if you haven’t seen it yet, haul yourself to the theater right now!), it’s safe to say that the film was able to spend the proper amount of time with the ’70s characters and the characters in the devastated future.

However, as we learned from director Bryan Singer several months ago, 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse (which is being described as an “extinction level event“) will be more of a First Class sequel, which means we probably won’t be seeing any of the original cast coming back…or will we?

In an interview with The Daily Beast, Days of Future Past and Apocalypse producer Simon Kinberg stated that some of the original cast will be involved. In another interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Kinberg stated how this film was meant to be a sendoff to many of these characters, similar to the original intent of X-Men: The Last Stand.

We approached it as a final goodbye for the original actors. But to be totally candid, that’s the way I approached X-Men: The Last Stand. If you talked to me in 2006 and said, “Do you think we’ll ever see Patrick Stewart as Professor Xavier again? Do you think we’ll see Ian and Halle and Ellen Page and Shawn Ashmore back on screen together?” I most likely would have said no, and certainly in the case of Patrick Stewart I would have said no way. There’s some part of our brains that hopes we will see them again, but we wanted to tell a story that felt like it was a conclusion to their stories.

As is typical with a producer’s comments on upcoming movies, Kinberg isn’t being too specific. However, given the nature of superhero adventures, it wouldn’t be surprising to see a couple of the old faces to return.

Obviously Wolverine would be the primary candidate for return. Despite stating at one point that Wolverine 3 would likely his last film, he’s recently been more open to returning as the clawed mutant. My thoughts? If he does appear in Apocalypse, it’ll be a cameo similar to the one in First Class, and hopefully with just as much obscenity-laced dialogue. Patrick Stewart has also hinted there may be something “X-Men” related in his future.

Since Apocalypse will be following the younger characters in the 1980s, it wouldn’t make much sense to include as many original cast members as Days of Future Past did. However, give how powerful Apocalypse is in the comics, maybe time travel has been added to his repertoire, and he’ll snatch a few mutants from the future to serve him. Or, y’know, he could just put up a Help Wanted flyer somewhere.