Here’s more casting news for First Class:

Benjamin Walker will soon be packing his rucksack and heading off to mutant school in Matthew Vaughn’s X-men prequel. After endless casting rumors, James McAvoy’s Professor Xavier has officially enrolled his first pupil in his School of Gifted Youngsters.

Don’t expect the Juliard trained theatre actor to be pulling on Kelsey Grammer’s old furry jumpsuit anytime soon. In true comic book style his blue body fuzz only comes as a result of a botched experiment when he is in his twenties. In fact his nickname at school is Magilla Gorilla, because of his unusually large and powerful limbs, the result of being exposed to nuclear radiation in the womb.

Other actors rumored to be cast are Jonah Hex’s Michael Fassbender as metal bender Magneto, Amber Heard as shape shifting Mystique. Rosamund Pike as scientist Dr. MacTaggart and Aaron Johnson as a young Cyclops.

I’d be very excited to see Rosamund Pike as Moira MacTaggart, if only because she was the coolest Bond girl (and one of the few bright spots in) Die Another Day.  Plus, Moira hasn’t seen nearly enough screen time, and I’ve always liked the character.

I don’t expect they’ll do a decent reboot and give Angel the place in the X-Men he deserves, as usual.

I saw Benjamin Walker in “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson” (stage musical) and he was great.

According to a talk Bryan Singer had with Ain’t It Cool News, here’s some of what you can expect:

The film is set in the 1960’s.  Professor Xavier (James McAvoy) will still have hair and legs that work.  Jean Gray and Cyclops will not appear, but Cyclops’ brother Havok will (played by Lucas Till).  Moira McTaggart (Rose Byrne) and Beast (Nicholas Hoult) will also be featured, as will Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) and Banshee (Caleb Landry Jones).

The main villains will be the Hellfire Club, led by Kevin Bacon as Sebastian Shaw and January Jones as Emma Frost.  I have to say I like this idea more than my original thought that Kevin Bacon would be playing Mister Sinister (although that would have been cool, too).

They’re KIND of getting X-Men mythology right.  I mean, aside from Mystique and Moria, all the characters they plan on bringing in were in the early issues of the comics.  Even then, Mystique is very long-lived (she was around long before her first appearance) and Moira has known Xavier for ages.  I’ll still see it, too, but I’m getting tired of all these “reboots”, so it better be good.

This movie feels like it’s going in the right direction. I felt that X-Men Last Stand spent too much time on the action sequences and not enough on who these people were. Still a cute film tho.

If Bryan Singer is attached I am definitely going to watch this one.

Bryan Singer’s only producing.  Matthew Vaughn is the director.  I’ve enjoyed all of his movies quite a bit so far, so I’m looking forward to it.