It seems that at the moment, pretty much every day there’s a new cast member coming or going from X-Men: First Class, although that’s not suprising, as Fox is rushing it into production so fast that director Matthew Vaughn is having to assemble his players at lightning speed. It’s also true that except for James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender as Professor X and Magneto, the studio won’t officially confirm or deny any specific piece of casting news, leading to much speculation. And today we’ve got two new names to add, plus confirmation on a third.
The new guys are Nicholas Hoult and Lucas Till, who will be playing young versions of Beast and Havok respectively. If you thought the role of Dr. Henry Philip Hank McCoy, aka Beast, had already gone to Benjamin Walker, you’d have been right until a few days ago. Apparently a deal was in place, but Fox started getting nervous about his age (they thought he was too old), told him he’d been dropped, then tried to get him back, but by that time the young Broadway star was so fed up with the whole thing he told the studio to go shove it. Now Variety reports that A Single Man star Hoult has stepped in. He was one of the top contenders for the role early on, but it was thought his part in Mad Max: Fury Road would prevent him from appearing in X-Men, but the shoot on that has movie been put back a few months, freeing up his schedule.
Perhaps more interesting is the news Hannah Montana: The Movie actor Lucas Till will be playing Alex Summers, aka Havok, as that means in this one we’re going to have both Scott Summers, aka Cyclops, and his younger brother. In the comics, the plasma blast wielding Alex often resents his brother’s model X-Man image, suggesting there may be a lot of sibling rivalry to deal with in First Class. The Lucas Till news comes via EW, who also suggests some of the X-Men characters being announced or rumoured are deliberate misdirection from Fox to keep the final line-up a surprise when it’s announced – which just adds to the confusion surrounding the casting on the film. They also say news yesterday that Aaron Johnson will play Cyclops is wrong, but again Fox won’t say either way.
Finally, for the last couple of weeks it’s been rumoured that Caleb Landry Jones, who’ll soon be seen in both The Last Exorcism and The Social Network, will take on the role of Banshee, and that’s now been confirmed.