When it was announced last week that Spider-Man would be coming to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and was going to be recast, one of the actors I suggested as potentially a great fit for the role was Kodi Smit-McPhee. Well, now it seems that's definitely not happening, as the young actor has instead been pulled into a different comic book movie franchise: X-Men.
Director Bryan Singer has officially announced via his personal Instagram that X-Men: Apocalypse has cast Kodi Smit-McPhee to play a young Kurt Wagner, a.k.a. Nightcrawler. You can see the announcement below:
Fans of the X-Men franchise will note that this is not the first time that we've seen a big screen version of the teleporting mutant Nightcrawler. The character made his live-action debut played by Alan Cumming in X2: X-Men United, and wound up being a fan favorite in the film. Sadly, the British star never wound up playing the role again, even though there were rumors going around for quite a long time that he would return to be a part of X-Men: Days of Future Past.
Kodi Smit-McPhee first got his big break starring alongside Viggo Mortensen in the Cormac McCarthy adaptation The Road, but went on to earn terrific acclaim for his performance in the vastly underrated horror film Let Me In. Last year the young actor got a taste of the blockbuster world starring in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes - though X-Men: Apocalypse should definitely prove to be a completely different kind of experience for him. After all, that movie had him mostly sitting in the woods and doodling, while this new franchise film will feature him covered in blue makeup and sporting a tail.
It was actually almost a year ago - months before the release of Days of Future Past - that Bryan Singer first teased the idea of bringing Nightcrawler back for X-Men: Apocalypse, though this casting news obviously confirms that he wound up going through with it. Kodi Smit-McPhee joins a cast that is filled with many other younger versions of previously established mutants, including Sophie Turner as Jean Grey, Alexandra Shipp as Storm, and Tye Sheridan as Cyclops.
Production is scheduled to start up very soon, though obviously we are still very much in the middle of the casting process. All of the new, young mutants will be joined in X-Men: Apocalypse by James McAvoy's Professor X, Michael Fassbender's Magneto, Jennifer Lawrence's Mystique, Nicholas Hoult's Beast, and Oscar Isaac as the titular villain. Look for it all to come together when the film arrives in theaters on May 27, 2016.
