Simon Kinberg Talks More 'X-Men: Apocalypse'; Hints Recasting Younger Versions of Characters

There has been a lot of talk of X-Men: Apocalypse recently, the last we heard was confirmation that Bryan Singer would be directing the next installment, with some Days of Future Past news also coming out involving the Rogue character in the film. Fans can't get enough of X-Men, so Simon Kinberg took some time to answer some questions and hinted that Apocalypse would complete a trilogy that was initially set for the First Class cast and that moving on with the younger characters could mean having to recast younger versions of some X-Men.

While promoting the X-Men: Days of Future Past Blu-ray release, Kinberg spoke to Yahoo! Movies UK and answered some questions sent in by fans, giving insight to the future of the franchise and more. From all the questions answered by Kinberg, a couple of points stand out, those being that X-Men: Apocalypse would center on the First Class cast while completing the trilogy that was originally set up and that if other X-Men main characters would be added they would have to be recast as younger versions. About completing the trilogy Kinberg said the following:

“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’.”

These comments, in my opinion, shouldn't be taken as meaning that everything will end with Apocalypse but that there will be a closure to this trilogy and they plan to move on after it. Speaking of seeing familiar characters, if talking about those from the original trilogy, that would mean there would be recasting of younger versions, to which Kinberg said:

 

“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.

It would make sense to cast younger actors to play these characters we've seen before and like Kinberg pointed out, if it could be done for Prof. X and Magneto it could also be done for other characters, and I think that would be the way to go if the plans are to continue the franchise with the First Class cast.