While Anya Taylor-Joy has kept quiet about her own rumored role as Magik in X-Men: New Mutants, she may have just spilled the beans on someone else’s. Taylor-Joy and James McAvoy, who plays Professor X, are both starring in M. Night Shyamalan's Split. ComingSoon.net caught up with Taylor-Joy while she was promoting the film in New York. She was first asked about her own role, but then asked about whether she hopes to reunite with current co-star McAvoy in New Mutants. “I mean, I think James is already a part of it, isn’t he?”
While this is not official confirmation that McAvoy will portray Professor X in New Mutants instead of Patrick Stewart, this bit of information does present an intriguing possibility if it's true. It suggests we’ll see the cast of the late 80s-early 90s period, following on from X-Men: Apocalypse, instead of an older and wiser Professor X and characters associated with the timeline of X-Men, X2, and The Last Stand.
So if McAvoy is returning for New Mutants, does this mean Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender and Nicholas Hoult will too?
X-Men: Apocalypse was the third and final film included in the contract signed by Lawrence, Fassbender, McAvoy and Hoult. However, Lawrence spoke about her return to the franchise as Mystique during an interview with Entertainment Weekly last year, talking specifically about she and her co-stars deal with Fox.
“Fassbender and McAvoy and I were all talking,” said Lawrence. “Like, ‘Will you come back?’ ‘I dunno.’ ‘I’ll come back, if you come back.’ Fox should be terrified because the deal we made was like if one of us doesn’t come back, none of us are.”
If Lawrence is true to her word with the all-or-nothing deal, this means we could see this group of characters for another film. However, X-Men writer Simon Kinberg added that even if Lawrence’s Mystique, McAvoy’s Professor X, and Fassbender’s Magneto can’t come back, he’ll figure something out.
“I just wanna finish this movie and then figure out the next one. But I do think about the next chapters of these stories,” Kinberg told EW before Apocalypse released “My hope is we can bring these guys back. And if we didn’t then I would adjust.”
New Mutants is rumored for a 2018 release.
