Now that Dark Phoenix has wrapped up the 20-year X-Men movie franchise, a whole bunch of interesting “what ifs?” have started surfacing regarding Fox’s shared universe. One such juicy nugget that’s been uncovered concerns First Class, the 2011 prequel that kicked off the current series starring James McAvoy as Professor X and Michael Fassbender as Magneto.
As you may or may not know, First Class began as an X-Men Origins movie for Erik Lensherr. However, after X-Men Origins: Wolverine tanked, the project was taken in a new direction. In its earlier form, however, the main villain of the piece wouldn’t have been Sebastian Shaw, leader of the Hellfire Club. Instead, it would’ve been Nathaniel Essex aka Mister Sinister.
Indeed, Mr. Essex is an antagonist who’s been rumored for a whole number of X-Men movies over the years but unfortunately, he’s still never shown up. But now that the mutants are back home at Marvel Studios, Kevin Feige and co. are looking to change that.
According to sources close to We Got This Covered, Marvel wants a fresh villain for their rebooted mutants, someone we haven’t seen on screen before and they’re interested in Mr. Sinister. No word on who may play him or how he’ll be involved in things, but we’re hearing that the studio definitely wants him.
Of course, this is hugely exciting to hear and no doubt, fans will be keeping their fingers crossed that Bryan Cranston may be on Kevin Feige’s radar. The Breaking Bad star expressed interest in playing the role a couple of years back, and while it’s unclear if he’d still want to get involved, it’d be amazing if Marvel could snag him.
But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. For now, we can tell you that Mr. Sinister will very likely be the villain in Marvel’s X-Men reboot and once we learn more, we’ll be sure to let you know.
