Like Star Trek and Terminator Genisys, Bryan Singer's X-Men: Days of Future Past used a complicated time travel storyline to essentially reboot 20th Century Fox's mutant franchise. Many of the actors who helped build the brand, such as Hugh Jackman and Jennifer Lawrence, seem to be on their way out while a new crop of stars are moving in to lead X-Men: Apocalypse. It's a bold, risky move, but Singer says everything we saw before was just a prelude to what comes next. He tells EW...
“This is kind of a conclusion of six X-Men films, yet a potential rebirth of younger, newer characters...This is the true birth of the X-Men.”
The film will be re-introducing a number of familiar characters played by different stars. Tye Sheridan is a young Cyclops, Sophie Turner is Jean Grey, Alexandra Shipp is Storm, Kodi Smit-McPhee is Nightcrawler, Ben Hardy is Angel, and Lana Condor is Jubilee. They'll get to work alongside the returning Lawrence, Michael Fassbender, Nicholas Hoult, James McAvoy, Lucas Till, and Rose Byrne, but it's unclear how many of them will continue on. Lawrence, Fassbender, and Hoult are unlikely to extend their deals.
But Singer's statement poses an interesting problem for studios embarking on this reboot path. Do it too often and fans won't bother getting invested in the characters because it would be pointless. Obviously, Fox has faith in him to pull this off without alienating the fan base, and if things work out he could be given more power over the studio's superhero universe.
