Patrick Stewart To Have Major Role In Wolverine 3?

By Brendon Connelly / February 10, 2015

I heard a very, very long time ago that somebody from the "original" or older X-Men would appear in Apocalypse. In the meantime, this has been denied, and more than once. But not any longer. In fact, Patrick Stewart seems pretty sure that Ian McKellen will be appearing in the film and has been happy to tell the world. He was speaking to Oregon Live (via Coming Soon), ostensibly about his role in Stephen Belber's Match but also, as I'm sure is always the case, a little bit about the X-Men movies.

"Yes, I understand that it seems to be very unlikely that I will be in the next X-Men movie, which is almost getting ready to start shooting in Montreal.... But Magneto, Ian McKellen, is certainly going to be in it. And what I'm very excited about is that we have been talking about a Wolverine movie, which would team Hugh Jackman and myself together. Wolverine and Professor Xavier. That would be a very different sort of X-Men from the four movies that I've already done."

Indeed it would. Maybe these decisions came about organically, but it does seem a little like Fox are rather keen to keep somebody from the "old guard" present in each of their new-wave X-movies. The massive box-office of Days of Future Past won't have done anything to dissuade them. What puzzles me is what business Old Magneto might have in a film set in the mid-80s. Flashforward? More timey wimey shenanigans? Framing device? And just as intriguing as that is the question of "Why Magneto? Why not somebody else? Why not Xavier?", especially seeing as First Class had Charles as its protagonist, and it seems like his story is the one that needs to most advancing next time around if we're going to close the gap between young and old Xaviers. We'll find out what's going on next year ased X-Men: Apocalypse is set for release in the US on May 17th 2016, with a UK release likely at more or les the same time.