After months of waiting, new details about who exactly will be in the New Mutants movie is starting to be revealed. The film will be full of new characters, but what about the ones we already know and love? It would certainly make sense for Professor Charles Xavier to be in a movie about any group of X-Men, however, one media source is reporting that the character will not appear in the film, meaning there's no role for James McAvoy.
Yesterday The Hollywood Reporter's Borys Kit was the one that broke the news that long rumored actors Maisie Willians and Anya Taylor-Joy were officially on board the New Mutants film. However, in addition to the news of who was in the movie, came some details on who wasn't. One actor named was Nat Wolff, who had been rumored as Cannonball, the other is now James McAvoy, who apparently also will not appear.
While we weren't necessarily expecting a lot of actors from the proper X-men franchise to appear in New Mutants, seeing James McAvoy play Professor Xavier seemed like a safe bet. The odds seemed even greater when Anya Taylor-Joy make a comment that, as she understood it, James McAvoy was going to be in the movie. Now, to be fair, at the time Taylor-Joy wouldn't confirm her own participation in the movie, and since we don't know exactly when she signed on, it's possible that she was just making the assumption that many other fans would have, expecting her Split co-star to reprise his role. At the time we assumed she had some inside information, but perhaps she really didn't know. This source would appear to be definitive, so the safe money is on a lack of Professor X.
It is unfortunate to hear that James McAvoy won't be appearing in New Mutants. Bringing in somebody from the main series cast to anchor this new movie into the franchise made sense, assuming that New Mutants is even supposed to be part of the same timeline of course. Professor Xavier seemed like the most obvious choice to be that character. At this point, we don't know if any existing X-Men will be appearing in New Mutants but since McAvoy is the only actor who we've officially been told won't be there, the door is still open for others.
We are expecting to see James McAvoy as Professor Xavier at least once more as he will almost certainly turn up in X-Men: Dark Phoenix, the film that will continue the story of the young X-Men following the events of X-Men: Apocalypse. From there it's anybody's guess where the X-Men franchise goes.
