The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been going strong for years now, constantly releasing new content in theaters and streaming with a Disney+ subscription. A few years back, Disney's acquisition of 20th Century Fox finally opened the door for characters like Deadpool and the X-Men join the shared universe, and fans have been waiting for news about upcoming Marvel movies. There are countless questions about the X-Men, and now Cyclops actor Tye Sheridan offered his thoughts about possibly returning to that role.

The X-Men movies had a long run, with two generations of actors playing certain roles. Mutant characters have been slowly trickling into the MCU (like in The Marvels' credits scene) but it's been unclear when the X-Men will actually assemble on the big screen. Tye Sheridan played Scott Summers in the final two chapters of Fox's franchise, and spoke with ScreenRant about whether or not he think he'll be back in that role. In the 28 year-old actor's words:

Honestly, this makes sense. Despite being Cyclops himself, it sound like Sheridan is just as clueless as the public about exactly how the X-Men will factor into the MCU. What's more, the Ready Player One actor is unsure if the stories have run their course with the previous cast of X-Men actors.

While the MCU X-Men movie is a total mystery, Kevin Feige and company have been methodically bringing in characters from that team's lore throughout projects on the small and silver screens. Patrick Stewart appeared briefly in Doctor Strange 2 as Professor X, while Kelsey Grammer appeared as Beast in The Marvels. Of course, the strongest connection has been through Hugh Jackman returning as Logan in Deadpool & Wolverine, joined by a number of other X-Men character variants.

The wild success of X-Men '97 showed how much fans love the characters in that corner of the Marvel world, so whenever the X-Men appear in the Marvel Cinematic Universe there will definitely be people paying attention. Tye Sheridan felt like he was finally getting his footing as Scott Summers in Dark Phoenix, but that ended up being the final chapter in Fox's franchise. He's still young enough to keep playing the character, but it's unclear what Kevin Feige has planned for the mutants.

The next MCU movie hitting theaters is Captain America: Brave New World on February 14th. For now, check the 2025 movie release dates.

Some actors are willing to go to pretty extreme lengths in order to nail a performance. That was definitely the case for The Card Counter star Oscar Isaac a few years back when he took on the role of the titular villain in X-Men: Apocalypse. The ordeal he went through while in full make-up and costume was apparently so intense that one of his co-stars still remembers how miserable he was while they were filming.

Tye Sheridan is currently co-starring with Oscar Isaac in Paul Schrader’s new crime drama. But of course, The Card Counter was not the first project that Sheridan met the Oscar nominee on. The two first worked together on the 2016's X-Men: Apocalypse, in which he played Cyclops. The actor told Looper that in comparison to their time on the set of the Marvel film, The Card Counter was probably a bit less painful:

Sheridan isn’t off-base when it comes to his memories of his co-star on the X-Men set. The actor himself admitted that the process of playing Apocalypse was, in his own words, “excruciating.” According to Oscar Isaac, transforming himself into the powerful blue-tinged mutant meant that he spent hours in a “40-pound suit” that was equipped with a cooling mechanism and left him with a limited range of motion. There is really no way that could be an enjoyable experience for anyone, so it’s understandable why he doesn’t have a lot of fond memories.

Despite the hassles associated with his first superhero film role, the actor has still decided to give the genre another go. He recently signed on to play the lead hero in Disney+’s Moon Knight series, officially marking his entry into the MCU. It will probably help that playing Marc Spector won’t require quite as much time in the make-up chair as En Sabah Nur did.

Before he begins his next foray into a Disney franchise, though, Oscar Isaac is keeping busy on multiple fronts. He’s doing promotional duties for two high-profile projects: Dune, which he personally believes is a “masterpiece,” and HBO’s Scenes From a Marriage, which resulted in a viral red carpet moment between himself and longtime friend and co-star Jessica Chastain. The man certainly knows how to keep our attention, regardless of how many pounds of blue latex he's wearing.

Legendary filmmaker, and one of Martin Scorsese’s longest-running collaborators, Paul Schrader has created some of cinema’s all-time great characters in Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver and Julian Kay in American Gigolo, and the decorated screenwriter and director looks to have done it once again with The Card Counter cast and its quartet of top-billed stars. With names like Oscar Isaac, Willem Dafoe, Tiffany Haddish, and Tye Sheridan sitting atop the list of names in Schrader’s moody crime drama about a former United States soldier and the son of one of his dead colleagues getting revenge, it’s easy to see why it’s one of the most anticipated 2021 movies.

You can probably name a few movies with each of those stars, but it might be a different story for other actors who show up in The Card Counter. Fear not, as we have put together a quick yet comprehensive list to help ease your mind.

Oscar Isaac (William Tell)

Leading the bunch in The Card Counter is Oscar Isaac, who portrays soldier-turned-drifter William Tell at the center of Paul Schrader’s intricate noir throwback. One of the biggest stars in today’s Hollywood with everything from the Star Wars “Sequel Trilogy” to Ex Machina under his belt, Isaac has built quite a name for himself for the better part of the past two decades, delivering commanding performances in film, television, theater, and even podcasts, collecting multiple awards (including a Golden Globe for Show Me a Hero) along the way.

And the future looks to be just as bright for Oscar Isaac, as he has one of the leading roles in Denis Villeneuve’s highly anticipated Dune adaptation as well as the Marvel Disney+ series Moon Knight. Oh, and there’s also the HBO limited series, Scenes from a Marriage, where Isaac will share the screen with his A Most Violent Year co-star, Jessica Chastain, once more.

Tiffany Haddish (La Linda)

Tiffany Haddish comes into the picture in The Card Counter as La Linda, a high-profile poker matchmaker who offers William Tell a way to enter the world of high-takes gambling. One of the hardest working names in not only Hollywood but the entertainment industry in general, Haddish has been on a role that never seems to lose momentum since the early 2000s, and even more so in recent years since becoming a household name with her turn in Girls Trip. With an Emmy Award-winning guest appearance on Saturday Night Live and a Grammy Award-winning comedy album (Black Mitzvah), Haddish has become a force to reckon with in today’s pop culture.

More recently, Tiffany Haddish showed her more dramatic side in The Kitchen, and extremely over-the-top side in Bad Trip, with much more to come in the very near future. The actress/comedian/writer will even star alongside Nicolas Cage in 2022’s The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.

Willem Dafoe (Major John Gordo)

Willem Dafoe shows up as the main antagonist in The Card Counter, portraying Major John Gordo, William Tell’s commanding officer who led a torture program at Abu Ghraib and allowed others to take the blame. Dafoe, a four-time Oscar nominee, has had one of those careers that has allowed him to portray everyone from Norman Osborn/Green Goblin in Spider-Man to Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ, and appear in everything from the John Wick franchise to multiple Oliver Stone films. To say his filmography is diverse would be understatement of epic proportions.

Over the years, Willem Dafoe has also showed up on The Simpsons, voiced an original villain in the 2004 video game James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing, and provided voice work for a number of animated movies like Finding Nemo and Fantastic Mr. Fox. Oh, and he’s also been a part of the xXx franchise on top of that.

Tye Sheridan (Cirk)

Tye Sheridan appears in The Card Counter as Cirk, the son of another soldier under Major John Gordo’s command whose suicide leads the young man down a dark path with thoughts of revenge and murder. Sheridan, who has since gone on to portray Scott Summers/Cyclops in X-Men: Apocalypse and X-Men: Dark Phoenix, got his start in Terrence Mallick’s 2011 art house film Tree of Life before breaking out in the 2012 coming-of-age crime drama Mud.

In 2018, Tye Sheridan had perhaps his biggest performance to date with his portrayal of Wade Watts in Steven Spielberg’s eye-catching and pop-culture-riddled adaptation of Ready Player One. Sheridan will next appear in George Clooney’s upcoming directorial effort The Tender Bar.

Bobby C. King (Slippery Joe)

Bobby C. King, a prolific stuntman and actor, shows up in The Card Counter as Slippery Joe. Over the years, King has appeared on TV shows like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Hollywood, as well as movies like Easy A, Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation, and The Horde. With more than 100 credits for his stunt work, there’s a chance you’ve seen King put his life on the line in everything from Year One to X-Men: First Class and everything else in between.

Kat Baker (Sara)

Kat Baker, who appears as Sara in The Card Counter, has only been acting for a couple of years now, but that stretch of time has been extremely busy for the actress. Prior to landing a role in Paul Schrader’s crime noir, Baker appeared in The Protégé, Chick Fight, and Fatman. Baker is also set to appear in The Comeback Trail alongside Robert De Niro, Tommy Lee Jones, Morgan Freeman, and Zach Braff.

Dylan Flashner (Sergeant Hoskins)

Dylan Flashner portrays Sergeant Hoskins in The Card Counter, perhaps the biggest movie in the fledgling actor’s filmography to date. Prior to appearing in the 2021 crime drama, Flashner appeared briefly in movies like Lanksy, Asking for It, Vanquish, and Farewell Amor, all of which were released since 2020. Like Kat Baker, the Flashner will be in The Comeback Trail, though the film’s new release date has not yet been announced. Flashner also has a music career in addition to his acting work, including the 2021 single “Bad Habits.”

Billy Slaughter (Fiddle)

Taking on the role of Fiddle in The Card Counter is Billy Slaughter, who has shown up in dozens of movies and several other high-profile TV series for the better part of the past two decades. If you are a fan of the Netflix crime drama Mindhunter, then you will surely recognize Slaughter as Charles Sanders in the show’s second and possibly final season. With other credits on shows like Treme, Nashville, American Horror Story, and The Purge, there’s a good chance you’ve seen Slaughter on the small screen over the years, but if not there, then you’ve probably seen him in movies like The Magnificent Seven, Midnight Special, Happy Death Day, and The Big Short.

Alexander Barbara (Mr. USA)

Alexander Barbara shows up as Mr. USA in The Card Counter, continuing a decent run of movies and TV shows that is pretty impressive, to say the least. Even though his name is not as immediately recognizable as the bigger stars at the top of this list, Babara has appeared on shows like Stranger Things, For All Mankind, and Queen of the South, as well as movies like The Hunt, Triple 9, and The Fate of the Furious.

Amye Gousset (Judy Baufort)

Amye Gousset shows up in The Card Counter as Judy Baufort. Prior to taking on the role in Paul Schrader’s latest in a long line of crime dramas, Gousset appeared on TV shows like Army Wives, Dark Corners, Nashville, and, most recently, The Purge. Her film credits include titles like Battlecreek, Assimilate, and multiple shorts dating back to 2010. Gousset will next appear in the upcoming documentary The Past Is Never Dead: The Story of William Faulkner, and Mysterious Circumstances: The Death of Meriwether Lewis.

Adrienne Lau (Crystal)

Adrienne Lau appears as Crystal in The Card Counter, a rare acting gig for the popular music artist who became the first Chinese-American singer in the top 10 of the U.S. Pop Billboard Singles Chart with her hit song, “Wanna Be Happy,” in July 2006. Other songs released by Lau include “You’re the One” with Petey Pablo, “Hypnotic Love,” and “Olympics Beijing” from the 2008 Beijing Summer Games.

Joel Michaely (Ronnie)

Joel Michaely shows up in The Card Counter as Ronnie. Ever since making his on-screen debut in the 1998 teen comedy Can’t Hardly Wait, Michaely has appeared in movies like Ghost World, The Rules of Attraction, and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, to name just a few. His TV credits include Unhappily Ever After, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and Ryan Murphy’s Popular, which ran on The WB from 1999 to 2001.

With a seemingly endless list of talented actors — both rising and well-established — in the Card Counter, it’s quite easy to see why Paul Schrader’s crime drama has gone from one of the most anticipated movies of the year to one of the most talked about. And, the best part, most of the names on the list, including Oscar Isaac, will be in some of the long-awaited 2022 movies as well.

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Based on the best-selling debut novel by Ernest Cline, 2018's Ready Player One was an expansive sci-fi action-adventure that introduced audiences to a dystopian world which was simultaneously old and new. More specifically, it centered around the disenfranchised lives of wayward strangers who are connected by their desire to discover the lost fortune of mysterious billionaire James Halliday, the creator of the virtual reality world known as OASIS.

Directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, Simon Pegg, and Mark Rylance, this '80s loving otherworldly odyssey didn't become a critical darling but it grossed nearly $600 million at the box office and earned an Oscar nomination for its visual effects. Now that it's been over three years since this blockbuster blasted onto the big screen, what is the Ready Player One cast doing now? Put on your virtual reality goggles and take a look!

Tye Sheridan (Wade Watts/Parzival)

As Wade Watts, i.e. Parzival, an avid Gunter who frantically searches for clues hidden inside the OASIS in order to unlock James Halliday's lost fortune, Tye Sheridan played the male protagonist in Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One. Most notably, Sheridan made his debut in Terrence Malick's masterpiece, The Tree of Life. Later, he received his first starring role in Jeff Nichols' Mud. Also, Sheridan plays Scott Summers, i.e. Cyclops, in the X-Men reboot series, which includes X-Men: Apocalypse, X-Men: Dark Phoenix, and Deadpool 2. Additionally, Sheridan can be seen in Joe, The Yellow Birds, Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, The Stanford Prison Experiment, and The Mountain.

Most recently, Tye Sheridan headlined the space-based drama, Voyagers. Furthermore, Sheridan appeared in The Night Clerk (which he also produced), Quibi's Wireless, and the video game, Madden NFL 21. Next, he'll be seen in Paul Schrader's The Card Counter. Right now, the actor is filming a role in George Clooney's The Tender Bar. Additionally, Sheridan is signed on to star in Black Flies and The Things They Carried.

Olivia Cooke (Samantha Cook/Art3mis)

In the role of Samatha Cook, better known as Art3mis, a determined Gunter who forms a kinship with Wade, Olivia Cooke played the female protagonist. Most notably, Cooke starred in A&E's Bates Motel. Additionally, the English actress played Becky Sharp in Amazon Prime's mini-series, Vanity Fair. Her other television credits include Modern Love, The Secret of Crickley Hall, and Blackout. Furthermore, outside of TV, Cooke starred in Ouija, The Quiet Ones, Thoroughbreds, and Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. She's also recognized for her performances in Life Itself, Katie Says Goodbye, The Limehouse Golem, The Signal, and last year's Sound of Metal. Additionally, the young talent was seen in One Direction's "Autumn Term" music video.

Most recently, Olivia Cooke starred in Pixie and Little Fish. She also had a starring role in Naked Singularity, which premiered at the San Francisco International Film Festival. Currently, Cooke is in the midst of filming the Game of Thrones prequel series, House of the Dragon. She's signed on to appear in Apple TV+'s Slow Horses.

Mark Rylance (James Halliday/Anorak the All-Knowing)

Playing the part of James Halliday, i.e. Anorak the All-Knowing, the inventor of OASIS who creates a scavenger hunt that leads to his vast fortune, Mark Rylance is the overarching protagonist of Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One. Most notably, Rylance won an Oscar for his supporting turn as Rudolf Abel in Spielberg's Bridge of Spies. Later, the actor reunited with the acclaimed filmmaker to play the title role in The BFG. Also, Rylance is a three-time Tony winner through his performances in Broadway's Boeing Boeing, Jerusalem, and Twelfth Night. His other notable film credits include Dunkirk, The Gunman, The Other Boleyn Girl, Hearts of Fire, Anonymous, and Blitz.

Last year, Rylance starred in Waiting for the Barbarians and The Trial of the Chicago 7. Next, he'll be seen in Terrence Malick's The Way of the Wind, Adam McKay's Don't Look Up, The Outfit, and The Fantastic Flitcrofts. Also, Rylance will appear in Brady Corbet's The Brutalist and he'll soon reunite with Simon Pegg for Peacock's The Undeclared War.

Ben Mendelsohn (Nolan Sorrento/IOI-655321)

As Nolan Sorrento, a.k.a. IOI-655321, the malicious head of IOI who savagely hunts for James Halliday's Easter Egg in order to take over the OASIS, Ben Mendelsohn plays the primary villain. Most notably, Mendelsohn won an Emmy for his supporting turn in Netflix's Bloodline. Outside of television, Mendelsohn is best known for his standout performances as Director Orson Krennic in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Andrew "Pope" Cody in Animal Kingdom, and Talos in Captain Marvel. Elsewhere, the actor appears in Mississippi Grind, Killing Them Softly, Starred Up, The Dark Knight Rises, Robin Hood (2018), The King, The Place Beyond the Pines, and Darkest Hour.

Most recently, Ben Mendelsohn produced and played Ralph Anderson in HBO's The Outsider. He's also seen in Babyteeth and heard in HBO Max's Infinity Train. Next, the actor stars in Joe Wright's Cyrano. He also recently filmed the thriller, Misanthrope. Additionally, Mendelsohn reprises his role as Talos in Disney+'s MCU series, Secret Invasion. The actor is also heard in the much-anticipated video game, Squadron 42.

Simon Pegg (Ogden Morrow/Curator)

In the role of Ogden Morrow, i.e. the Curator, James Halliday's best friend and the co-creator of the OASIS, Simon Pegg plays an emotional part in Ready Player One. Most famously, Pegg co-wrote and starred in Edgar Wright'sCornetto film trilogy, which includes Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World's End. Additionally, Pegg co-wrote and starred in Paul. Pegg plays Benji Dunn in the Mission: Impossible movies and Montgomery "Scotty" Scott in the recent Star Trek blockbusters.

Most recently, Simon Pegg co-created, produced, and starred in Amazon Prime's Truth Seekers. He also produced BBC Two's Out of Her Mind. Additionally, Pegg directed Pom Klementieff's short film, Au Revoir, Chris Hemsworth. Next, the actor will be heard in America: The Motion Picture. Right now, Pegg is reprising his role as Benji in Mission: Impossible 7 and 8. Additionally, Pegg will once again voice the title character in the CG-animated prequel, The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild. Furthermore, he will reunite with Mark Rylance in Peacock's The Undeclared War.

Lena Waithe (Helen Harris/Aech)

Playing the part of Helen Harris. a.k.a. Aech, Wade's best friend and a fellow Gunter, Lena Waithe made her film debut in Ready Player One. Most notably, Waithe won an Emmy for writing Netflix's Master of None, where she also plays Denise. Additionally, the award-winning television writer created Showtime's The Chi and BET's Boomerang and Twenties. As an actress, meanwhile, Waithe can be seen in Westworld, Netflix's Dear White People, and Hulu's Bad Hair. She also lent her voice to Onward. Furthermore, Waithe wrote for Fox's Bones and Nickelodeon's How to Rock. She also penned and co-produced Queen & Slim. Additionally, Waite produced Dear White People, Step Sisters, Ladylike, The 40-Year-Old Version, and Amazon Prime's Them.

Next, Lena Waithe will star in Master of None Season 3. Additionally, the screenwriter wrote and produced Netflix's Beauty. She's also the producer behind Birth of Cool, A Thousand and One, and the upcoming documentary, The One and Only Dick Gregory.

T.J. Miller (i-R0k)

As i-R0k, an obnoxiously egotistical Gunter who's constantly belittled by Wade, T.J. Miller voiced a minor antagonist in Ready Player One. Making his acting debut in Cloverfield, Miller found fame and acclaim through his standout performance as Erlich Bachman in HBO's Silicon Valley. The comedic actor is also known for his supporting performance in Deadpool 1 & 2. Additionally, Miller lent his voice to The Emoji Movie.

T.J. Miller's other notable movie credits include She's Out of My League, Transformers: Age of Extinction, Office Christmas Party, and Yogi Bear. Furthermore, Miller lent his voice to Big Hero 6 and How to Train Your Dragon 1 & 2. Outside of film, the actor wrote, produced, and played the titular character in The Gorburger Show. Most recently, Miller was seen in Underwater and The Stand-In. He was also heard in the short film, Street Walking. The comedian doesn't have any upcoming projects on the docket. After a series of allegations were made against Miller, that might not change anytime soon.

Philip Zhao (Zhou/Sho)

In the role of Zhou, i.e. Sho, a young Gunter on a quest to discover Halliday's Easter Egg alongside Daito, Philip Zhao plays a supporting character in Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One. This property-mashing blockbuster served as the child actor's screen debut. Likewise, the film remains Zhao's only screen credit; he has no future projects lined up.

Win Morisaki (Toshiro/Daito)

Playing the part of Toshiro, i.e. Daito, a fellow Gunter, Win Morisaki was a reserved character who eventually warmed up to Wade in Ready Player One. Most notably, Morisaki is the lead vocalist of the J-pop boy band, PrizmaX. His other film credits include Shodo Girls, A Yell From Heaven, Parade, Thriller Restuarant, Listen to the Universe, and last year's Humanoid Monster Bela. Additionally, Morisaki is heard in Children of the Sea and the video game, Death Come True. Also, the actor voiced Mr. Mistoffelees in the Japanese dub of Cats.

Last year, Win Morisaki starred in The Real Thing. Most recently, Morisaki was seen in the Japanese drama Nishiogikubo Mitsuboshi Youshudou. Next, the actor will star in Cherry Blossom Tower.

Hannah John-Kamen (F’Nale Zandor)

As F'Nale Zandor, the steadfast leader of the Sixers, Hannah John-Kamen played a secondary antagonist in Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One. The actress is most commonly recognized for her performance as Ava Starr, i.e. Ghost, in Ant-Man and the Wasp, andis remembered for her performances as Yalena "Dutch" Yardeen in Syfy's Killjoys, Ornela in HBO's Game of Thrones, and the title role in Netflix's The Stranger. Also, she played the part of Wilhelmina "Helm" Watson in Peacock's short-lived series, Brave New World.

Additionally, Hannah John-Kamen lent her voice to the role of Naia in Netflix's The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. Furthermore, John-Kamen appeared in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Tomb Raider. She was heard in the Dark Souls video game series. Most recently, John-Kamen appeared in SAS: Red Notice. Next, the actress will be seen in Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City. Also, John-Kamen is soon slated to star in the horror movie, Unwelcome.

You can stream Ready Player One on HBO Max here.

Over the course of the past 10 years, Tye Sheridan has gone from having a small yet pivotal role in Terrence Malick’s 2011 sprawling drama The Tree of Life to becoming one of the young rising stars of today’s Hollywood with notable appearances in everything from Ready Player One to a pair of X-Men movies. And while it’s not yet known if we’ll ever see Sheridan reprise his role of Cyclops, aka Scott Summers in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, that doesn’t mean the future isn’t bright for the talented actor.

In the next couple years, multiple Tye Sheridan movies will land in theaters and show just what kind of range the star of movies like Mud and more recently Voyagers has to offer. With a crime thriller written and directed by one of Martin Scorsese’s longtime collaborators to the long-awaited war drama based on one of the landmark novels about the Vietnam War, and more, it doesn’t look like we’ve seen the last of Sheridan just yet.

The Card Counter - TBD (Post-Production)

Writer-director Paul Schrader has been churning out gripping crime dramas and evocative thrillers for nearly 50 years now, and following the success of his 2017 Academy Award-nominated The First Reformed, the longtime collaborator of Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver and Raging Bull among others) will release what sounds like yet another great story of revenge set in the belly of humanity. Per Variety, The Card Counter will follow a career gambler named William Tell (Oscar Isaac) whose life is turned upside down when he is approached by a young man by the name of Cirk (Tye Sheridan), who wants to get back at a corrupted military colonel (Willem Dafoe). Tiffany Haddish, who proved her dramatic chops in 2019’s The Kitchen, is also part of the cast.

Production initially began on The Card Counter in February 2020, but everything was brought to a halt when film sets around the world began to shutter in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Cameras started rolling again that July, and even though Paul Schrader only had to complete one week’s worth of shooting, he wasn’t the biggest fan of finishing a movie under those strict conditions. But it wasn’t all bad news for Schrader, as the COVID-19 shutdown and subsequent restrictions made it to where his longtime friend Martin Scorsese could help him with the finishing touches, per IndieWire. There is no word on when The Card Counter will be released.

The Tender Bar - TBD (Post-Production)

The upcoming coming-of-age drama The Tender Bar is an adaptation of American novelist J.R. Moehringer’s 2005 memoir of the same name, which detailed his upbringing in a bar by his Uncle Charlie and patrons of the bar who helped serve as father figures after his own disappeared just as he was born. Tye Sheridan will be playing the adult version of Moehringer in George Clooney’s latest directorial effort with Daniel Ranieri taking on the younger version of the character. The rest of the cast includes Ben Affleck as Moehringer’s Uncle Charlie with American Horror Story’s Lily Rabe portraying the boy's mother.

The Tender Bar has been in development for nearly a decade now with initial plans getting started back in 2013 when Sony Pictures was set to release the film. Amazon Studios picked up the rights in July 2020, and George Clooney signed on to direct shortly thereafter. After that, it didn’t take too much time to get the ball rolling as production started up in eastern Massachusetts in February 2021 before wrapping two mothers later, per The Patriot Ledger.

Black Flies - TBD (Pre-Production)

Tye Sheridan will soon share the screen with his The Tree of Life co-star Sean Penn in Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire’s upcoming adaptation of Shannon Burke’s novel Black Flies, a film that will see the pair play two lifesaving paramedics with completely different outlooks on life. When announced in February 2021, Deadline described the movie as being one that focuses on the toll the job takes on the medics on a daily basis. Sheridan will take on the role of a young paramedic preparing for medical school who takes a job driving alongside the seasoned veteran played by Penn.

Production on Black Flies is scheduled to get underway in New York City at some point in late 2021, but it remains to be seen exactly when the film will be ready for release and which road it will take when it is ready for audiences.

The Things They Carried - TBD (Pre-Production)

More than 30 years after it was first published, The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien’s celebrated collection of short stories loosely based on his own experiences in the Vietnam War, will be getting a full-fledged, star-studded adaptation at some point in the near future. Led by cast that includes Tom Hardy, Tye Sheridan, Pete Davidson, Stephan James, Ashton Sanders, Bill Skarsgard, and multiple other top-tier actors, Rupert Sanders’ (Ghost in the Shell) epic and poignant war drama will bring to life one of the greatest military works since the conflict ended nearly 50 years ago.

It was first announced by Deadline back in November 2020, but there have been no updates since the initial reveal. Expect to hear more about The Things They Carried in the coming months.

Ready Player Two? - TBD (Rumored)

With Ready Player One bringing in nearly $583 million at the box office upon its release in 2018, it only seemed like a matter of time before Steven Spielberg would return to the direct, or at least produce, the adaptation of Ernest Cline’s followup novel Ready Player Two. And while nothing definitive has been announced by the filmmaker’s Amblin Entertainment or Warner Bros. Pictures, according to Cline himself, the big screen version of his sequel is in the early stages of development as he revealed in a late 2020 Inverse interview.

There aren’t a lot of details regarding the project at this stage in the game, but with Ready Player Two (the novel) picking up with protagonist Wade Watts shortly after the first novel ends, it almost seems like a foregone conclusion that Tye Sheridan would be returning if and when the film is given the official greenlight. But with lukewarm reception to the novel upon its release, the future of the Ready Player Two movies largely remains up in the air at this point.

Even though it remains to be seen when, or even if Ready Player Two will move forward and enter production at some point in the near future, there are plenty other Tye Sheridan movies to get excited about in the coming months and years. But if you want to know what’s coming to a theater near you in the not-so-distant future, check out CinemaBlend’s list of 2021 movie premiere dates.

SPOILERS are ahead for Voyagers, only in theaters now.

Anyone else feeling a bit more grateful to be on the solid ground of planet Earth after Neil Burger’s Voyagers? The science fiction thriller followed the fallout of a young crew of 30 on a one-way trip to a sustainable new world that will take their whole lives to travel to. Following the death of Colin Farrell’s Richard, the crew is left to their own devices to continue the mission they were born into or challenge it and live more autonomously. Let’s see what Voyagers stars Lily-Rose Depp, Tye Sheridan and Fionn Whitehead thought of how things panned out, shall we?

The inciting incident is, of course, the realization that the entire crew has been taking medication called “The Blue” all of their lives to suppress their human desires. Once they catch on to the secret, the ship runs rampant (and all hormonal) which divides them into two groups. One lead by Fionn Whitehead’s Zac, who wants to stop taking The Blue and forgo the mission all together and the other by Tye Sheridan and Lily-Rose Depp’s Christopher and Sela, who accept their mission to procreate for future generations.

After a chaotic and violent third act on the Voyagers ship, the crew decides to compromise. They will no longer take The Blue, but they will stick to the mission and reach their promise land. When CinemaBlend spoke to the cast, Lily-Rose Depp shared her thoughts on the ending on how it may affect the crew’s future:

Lily-Rose Depp had an optimistic look at the Voyagers ending when I posed to them the question as to how they think the society stemming from the crew would go forward following an unconventional upbringing on the ship without culture and desires. Thankfully, by the end, they decide to embrace being human, along with deciding to raise a new generation and live on the new planet after all. Tye Sheridan had a short and sweet response to follow Depp’s:

Fionn Whitehead was exploring the opposite point of view as his Voyagers character. He shared his own take away from the film following the ending:

Voyagers truly incites a discussion we grapple with every day as a society. Do we live for the moment without thought of consequence for what comes next, or do we implement some sacrifices into our lives for the greater good and to benefit others? A compromise is fair in our everyday lives, too. But following the dramatic events of the Lord of the Flies in space thriller, one has to wonder how the society they build will become.

What did you think of the ending of Voyagers? Were you satisfied? Vote in the poll below, check out what critics are saying about the film and take a look at what movies are coming next to theaters and streaming this year here on CinemaBlend. Voyagers is now playing in theaters.

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This weekend’s latest release, Voyagers, follows a crew of 30 young men and women as a spaceship takes them on a one-way trip to a new planet. Since the promised land that awaits them will take nearly 100 years to reach, the all-star cast including X-Men actor Tye Sheridan, Lily-Rose Depp, Fionn Whitehead and Colin Farrell begin to feel the walls close in on their floating home by the minute. The science fiction thriller explores how closed off space travel can feel, and apparently it wasn’t too difficult to imagine on set either.

When CinemaBlend spoke to Ready Player One actor Tye Sheridan and the Voyagers cast, they broke down exactly what it was like on set filming its tense moments. In the words of Sheridan:

Voyagers may remind the viewer of sci-fi classics such as Alien or Interstellar, but more than the others, the movie explores living in confinement through these characters. The movie’s premise also revolves around the discovery that the crew has been living a life of sedation thanks to a mysterious blue drug. Fionn Whitehead, who memorably fronted Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk and Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, also spoke about his experience:

If you ever wondered what it feels like to work on a movie spaceship, it turns out it’s super uncomfortable. Fionn Whitehead spoke about it actually feeling more closed off in person than it does in Voyagers, as the 30-person crew find themselves in a frustrating Lord of the Flies-like situation that draws them apart.

Voyagers was written and directed by Neil Burger, who previously made 2011’s Limitless and 2014’s YA adaptation Divergent. It sees Tye Sheridan exploring sci-fi much further following his major roles in Ready Player One and as Cyclops in the X-Men prequel films. In the movie, his character, Christopher, becomes drawn to Sela, played by actress, model and daughter to Johnny Depp, Lily-Rose Depp. Fionn Whitehead’s Zac rocks the ship with some controversial ideas about how the crew should proceed after a life of sedation.

Voyagers is coming to theaters this weekend, following a landmark moment for movie theaters thanks to COVID-19 progress and the huge draw of Godzilla vs. Kong. We’ll see how Voyagers does this weekend when the Lionsgate film arrives this Friday, April 9. Check out what other new releases are coming our way with CinemaBlend’s 2021 movie release schedule.

From the mind of Neil Burger (Divergent, Limitless) comes Voyagers, a sci-fi thriller that he has written and directed. It stars Colin Farrell, Lily-Rose Depp, Tye Sheridan, and Fionn Whitehead, among others. The film takes place in a fictional future where a hospitable planet far from Earth has been discovered, but it takes 86 years for a crew to arrive. So in order to start a colony of humans there, 30 young men and women are sent into space on a mission, during which they will reproduce so that their grandchildren can become the first colonists. But when the children are young adults, one discovers that they’ve been given a drug that suppresses their ability to truly feel human, and chaos ensues.

Voyagers debuts in theaters on April 9, and critics have already started sharing their thoughts on the film. Check out what they're saying.

Our very own Sarah El-Mahmoud saw the sci-fi thriller for the home team and was disappointed, rating it a 2.5 out of 5 stars. Though Voyagers has a solid concept and stylistic cinematography, El-Mahmoud’s interest in the film went downhill after the first half. She argues that the script doesn’t allow the actors enough to work with, specifically Tye Sheridan and Lily-Rose Depp, and that the movie is too “safe.” She writes:

David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter says Voyagers is “basically Lord of the Flies in space,” pointing out that it’s not very original. While Rooney considers the cinematography “invigorating” and compliments Travor Gurecki’s score, he argues that the script doesn’t allow the characters to have enough personality, and this is needed as the film builds tension through a contemplation of the essential struggles of human nature. Though the young adults on the voyage are supposed to lack individuality, as that’s the point before they figure out why they’re so docile, the rest of the film doesn’t allow the characters to be anything more than basic outlines. Rooney said:

Katie Walsh from the Los Angeles Times also touched on the lack of individuality of the characters in Voyagers, and noted that even later on when the kids stop taking the vitamin that stops them from having any feeling, there’s still a “chill” between the characters and they act as if they haven’t grown up together all those years. Walsh writes:

Vanity Fair’s Richard Lawson was majorly let down by the space thriller. He enjoyed the premise of the film and how it could have had such thematic possibility. However, he compares it, like we’ve seen before, to “Lord of the Flies in space,” and was disappointed that it left so many paths unexplored. Lawson saw the potential diminish scene after scene, and noticed a lot of narrative threads that could be so easily pulled, but are never touched. Overall, he said:

Leigh Monson from What To Watch also touched on the commonality between Voyagers and Lord of the Flies in her review, but was a little more impressed than other critics we've highlighted here. She did note that the movie failed to deliver as much personality to the women than to the men (though the men are pretty “stock characters”), leaving Lily-Rose Depp’s character with little to do. But Monson argues that predictable though it is, the climax remains thrilling.

Will audiences see Voyagers as simply Lord of the Flies in space? Or will they enjoy it more than some aforementioned critics have? We'll have to wait until April 9 when the sci fi thriller releases in theaters to find out.

Until then, you can check out our list of all of the new movies coming out this month to plan your next trip to the theater or your couch.

The Commercial Space Age is seemingly before us, as we’re slowly seeing an exploration of exciting journeys out of Earth’s atmosphere. Neil Burger’s Voyagers challenges the freedom that Star Trek or Star Wars often depict when traveling among the stars. This science fiction thriller imagines the long jaunt of a group of children raised in space – doomed to spend their whole lives on their way to a destination on another world. Although it serves as an interesting thought experiment, the movie's most burning question in its space expedition is simply a sullen, “Are we there yet?”

Voyagers establishes a world where a hospitable planet away from Earth has been discovered, but it takes 86 years for its crew to arrive. In order to start a colony of humans on this new world, a crew of 30 children are placed aboard a mission to grow up together and procreate in hopes that their children will eventually arrive safely and settle. The movie follows the crew as young adults when one discovers that they’ve been given a drug that suppresses their ability to truly feel human their whole lives, and a Lord of the Flies scenario ensues.

Voyagers has a solid, immersive concept... until it cuts the cord.

Neil Burger is a solid filmmaker to bring a science-fiction concept such as Voyagers to life. The writer/director memorably made 2011’s Limitless, which conversely explores a drug that opens up an expansive world to Bradley Cooper’s leading character. Burger also successfully played around with YA dystopia with 2014’s Divergent. Voyagers feels like a bit of a remix of these two films, but unfortunately does not take its concept across that line that previous sci-fi films of its kind have dared to go.

The first half of Voyagers is well executed. The cinematography is stylistic and successfully envelopes the audience in the spaceship these 30 kids grew up on. The heart of the film feels carried in Colin Farrell’s character, who is the only human on the crew who was not born on the ship. It’s interesting to understand the mission through his eyes, as Farrell bonds with the rest of the crew as he explains to them about how their existence will usher in generations of life, even though their own lives must be suppressed to living on a ship with the same routine day-to-day.

Voyagers is less of a science fiction action-adventure, and more so a claustrophobic thriller and introspective piece on how a group of young adults may react to its premise. The two concepts that end up being discussed here are whether one should suffer today to benefit future generations, or go prioritize self-focused autonomy – which some members of the crew start to adopt as they challenge both their upbringings and mission. But when Voyagers enters its second half it becomes more of a tired arguing match than an intriguing commentary.

The talented Tye Sheridan and Lily-Rose Depp are not given enough to work with.

The two actors that seek to anchor Voyagers are Tye Sheridan (Ready Player One, X-Men: Days of Future Past) and Lily-Rose Depp (The King, Yoga Hosers). They each offer solid performances on their own, along with Fionn Whitehead (Dunkirk, Black Mirror: Bandersnatch). The chemistry is overall thin and it feels as though they were restrained by the content of the script. Voyagers is basically about a group of young people who lack personality because they have been shielded from culture and pleasure and with that it becomes difficult to empathize with them.

There absolutely could have been a version of Voyagers that explored its concept and allowed room to show off complex and interesting characters, but the movie is so focused on being plot driven that it doesn't have that capacity.

Voyagers is a sci-fi film that is much too safe and confining to satisfy.

Voyagers also misses the mark on exploring the euphoria of these young people learning about their sexual desires for the first time. The movie’s use of sexuality ends up being disappointing because it's more so explored in a predatory, empty kind of way. Overall, the movie glosses over one of the most intriguing aspects sparked throughout the film, and when the crew has the chance to dive deeper into its characters it stays on the surface.

Despite its character flaws, the movie does manage to be entertaining to some degree. It takes an old school science fiction approach that calls for performance over big effects or expertly-choreographed action sequences. A studio film going for a more intimate, dramatic approach for this genre of film is rare, but there’s just not enough appeal on an intellectual or thematic level to engage the viewer with this approach. Voyagers is overall disappointing, but is not without some heart and allure.

It's always exciting to hear about exciting films launching with an explosive start, and this article is about one of those cases. Author Tim O'Brien's book The Things They Carried has been celebrated for decades as one of the great works about the experience of being on the ground during the Vietnam War, and now a movie adaptation is coming together with a brilliant cast and some very talented people behind the camera.

News about the adaptation of The Things They Carried comes to us from Deadline, which says that the project has already attracted some incredible performers to join the ensemble cast, including Tom Hardy, Pete Davidson, Tye Sheridan, Stephan James, Ashton Sanders, Bill Skarsgard, Moises Arias, Angus Cloud, and Martin Sensmeier. As noted by the trade, that's one hell of a lineup for a non-studio production, though Hardy's involvement in particular makes sense given that his production company, Hardy Son & Baker, is behind the project.

The Things They Carried was first published in 1990, and is a collection of short stories following a platoon of young American soldiers deployed during the Vietnam War. O"Brien himself served during the conflict, and his experiences fuel what is a mix of autobiographical memoir and fiction in the book. In the author's own words, "In many cases a true war story cannot be believed... In other cases you can't even tell a true war story. Sometimes it's just beyond telling."

The book earned instant acclaim upon release, and both won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was given the distinction of being a New York Times Book of the Century. One of the short stories, specifically "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong," was previously adapted as a film called A Soldier's Sweetheart in 1998. The film starred Kiefer Sutherland and Skeet Ulrich, but it was never released in theaters domestically.

Rupert Sanders, who last directed the Ghost In The Shell adaptation starring Scarlett Johansson, is helming the film, and the script is being penned by Scott B. Smith, who is best known for writing Sam Raimi's A Simple Plan (both the novel it's based on and the adaptation).

With The Things They Carried still in early stages, we presently don't know about any of the roles that will be played by the actors who have already signed on, but what should make fans of the book even more excited about the adaptation is that apparently this is only the first wave of casting news. According to the trade, the film isn't done filling out its ensemble, and one can imagine that the excitement that will be generated by this initial news should help it get even more talented people involved.

Stay tuned for future updates about the project here on CinemaBlend!

Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One seems ripe for a sequel. There’s an endless array of pop-culture references that can power a story like the one that we way in the book (and Steven Spielberg movie), so all it should require is a new quest on which Wade Watts, aka Percival, can go on now that he has unlocked the mysteries of the OASIS and solved James Halliday’s series of riddles.

As it turns out, the Austin-based author DOES have a follow-up story coming to bookshelves, and now we know its storyline. Titled Ready Player Two, the novel will pick up where the original story left off, with Wade taking over Halliday’s empire. Only, in the vaults of the eccentric gamer’s estate, he unlocks yet another powerful tool that will attract all sorts of enemies. EW has the official book description, which reads as such:

Sounds like a sequel! But does it sound like a movie? As you know, Steven Spielberg directed the adaptation of Ready Player One back in 2018, with X-Men star Tye Sheridan playing the lead role of Wade. Would they like to return to a film sequel? Sheridan recently was asked this by ComicBook, and he admitted:

Textbook safe answer. The bottom line is that Ready Player One earned $582 million at the worldwide box office, which should be more than enough to justify a sequel. Steven Spielberg doesn’t even have to return for it. This could be one of these franchise situations where new filmmakers step up and put their imprints on Cline’s world, like when JA Bayona joined Jurassic World, or Steven DeKnight took over Pacific Rim.

Much like Tye Sheridan, we will play the waiting game, and as soon as we have new Ready Player Two news, we will drop a quarter into the slot.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is in a unique place right now. We're currently occupying the interim period between Phases, as Black Widow has been delayed a number of times. Additionally, Disney's acquisition of 20th Century Fox opens up the possibility of characters like the Fantastic Four and X-Men to finally join the behemoth franchise. The latter would likely require a new cast of stars, and recent Cyclops actor Tye Sheridan recently spoke to someone else playing Scott Summers.

Cyclops is one of the most iconic X-Men characters of all time. And as such, he's already made a ton of appearances on the big screen, played by three different actors throughout the X-Men franchise. The most recent was Tye Sheridan, who played Scott in X-Men: Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix. When asked about another performer wearing the signature red visor, Sheridan said:

Well, that was certainly a mature way of looking at things. While Tye Sheridan likely would have loved a longer tenure playing Cyclops, he understands that the X-Men are beloved characters that don't actually belong to the actors. After all, he took on the mantle of Scott Summers from James Marsden, who made a strong impression in the original trilogy of movies.

Tye Sheridan's comments to ComicBook truly shows how much the young actor understands the legacy of his signature X-Men character. Comic book heroes are often played by multiple actors, just look at how many version of Batman have hit the big screen over the years. Cyclops has also been no exception, as prior to Sheridan's involvement in Apocalypse, the character was also briefly played by Tim Pocock in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

Of course, Tye Sheridan did get specific about the future of his signature X-Men character. The Ready Player One star wants the story and cast to do the X-Men justice, which would help Sheridan pass on Cyclops' visor to the next actor. Unfortunately, there's currently no indication to if/when the mutants will show up in the greater Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Dark Phoenix and The New Mutants were the final two installments of the X-Men franchise as we know it, with the latter movie only just arriving this October. As such, it would make sense of Kevin Feige and company waited a few years before bringing the mutants into the MCU. There are plenty of fan theories regarding how, with some believing the key is in Elizabeth Olsen's Scarlet Witch. Only time will tell.

CinemaBlend will keep you updated on all things X-Men and Marvel as more details become public. In the meantime, check out our 2020 release list to plan your next movie experience.

Tyler Hoechlin may have cemented his place on CW’s lineup for this fall’s Superman And Lois, but the future of the big-screen Kryptonian is in a much more convoluted place. Henry Cavill’s Superman kicked off the DCEU back in 2013 with Man of Steel, but Warner Bros’ vision for its comic book universe has shifted quite a bit since. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that by the time a new script gets off the ground for the DC character to return, another actor may replace Henry Cavill.

I’ll admit, whilst compiling this list, it does remind one of just how perfect Henry Cavill is as Superman. The man just got the jaw for it, ya know? Justice League left some loose ends that the studio has slowly started to redeem with standalone movies for Wonder Woman, Aquaman and The Flash on the way. Henry Cavill's contract is up for Superman, but he did recently make it clear that he has “not given up on the role.” Even if he is Geralt of Rivia on The Witcher now. And we’ve just seen Robert Pattinson replace Ben Affleck in The Batman.

In other words, Henry Cavill is still my No. 1 Superman pick, but should the role be passed down here are some solid choices for Kal-El:

Richard Madden

Given there isn’t some kind of clause in his contract that he can’t play both a Marvel and DC hero, Richard Madden could pretty effortlessly take on the role of Sups. The actor is of course best known for his role as Robb Stark in Game Of Thrones, but he’s since kept busy in his Golden Globe-winning role Bodyguard and played John Reid in Rocketman. Next he’ll dive into the superhero realm in next year’s Eternals as Ikaris. The Scottish actor is a particularly good choice for Superman because well… just look at him. It also doesn't hurt that he has this mixture of charm and depth that the role calls for.

Armie Hammer

Back in 2008 when George Miller was going to make Justice League: Mortal, Armie Hammer was set to play Batman but the production ended up being scrapped due to the Writer’s Guild Strike. Batman is off the table for the Call Me By Your Name actor with Robert Pattinson stepping into that suit and that's A-OK because Superman might actually be a better choice for Hammer. Aside from the “good guy” vibe he gives off, he is an incredibly underrated talent that would thrive in the DCEU. He's been due a franchise for too long! Give The Man From U.N.C.L.E. another watch – him partnering up with Cavill shows he can rise to the occasion.

Michael B. Jordan

Remember all those “Michael B. Jordan could be the next Superman” rumors a few months back? Well, it stuck and got us thinking about it. Although Jordan could run into that whole aforementioned Marvel vs. DC clause with his Black Panther role (especially as the main villain of one of the MCU’s finest), why not Jordan? There’s the obvious “he doesn’t look like Superman” argument, but if we’re going for colorblind casting approach, he has really proven himself the past few years whether it be his role in Creed or Just Mercy. He’d undoubtedly work hard to match the physicality of Kal-El and knows how to balance humor with drama.

Miles Teller

Back in 2014, Miles Teller starred in Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash which is highly-regarded as one of the best movies of the 2000s’ thus far. Since the 33-year-old has been in the Divergent movies, The Spectacular Now and sadly Fantastic Four alongside Michael B. Jordan. He’s also set to play Goose’s son “Rooster” in the upcoming Top Gun: Maverick. The guy’s already got an impressive resume, real acting talent and I think he’d bring something unique and inspired to Superman if given the chance. Is typically cast as a kind of chip-on-his-shoulder character, so I’d be interested to see him take on the small-town Kansas alien.

Henry Golding

It’s been pretty amazing to see Henry Golding blow up the past couple years, so suddenly. 2018 became a perfect storm for the actor when he starred as the leading man in the record-breaking romantic comedy Crazy Rich Asians and Paul Feig’s A Simple Favor in the same few months. Since he’s also been in Last Christmas, Guy Ritchie’s The Gentleman and he’s gearing up to play Snake Eyes. The reason why Golding is a good choice for Superman because he has that cereal-box pearly white smile and demeanor that oozes the superhero. He’s the kind of guy that can look intimidating but secretly wouldn’t kill a fly.

Tye Sheridan

If we’re looking for a younger Superman… or a Superboy if you will (hey, I don’t know Warner Bros plans, I have to cover my bases), may I recommend Tye Sheridan? You know him from Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One, as Cyclops in the X-Men prequels and a few hardcore roles such as in Joe, Dark Places and The Mountain. The 23-year-old is clearly a highly sought-after actor who has a bright future ahead of him. He has an emotional quality and likability to him that Kal-El could use in the often intense stories from the comic books.

Wes Bentley

For the opposite side of the spectrum onto the oldest actor on this list is Wes Bentley, who is 41 years old. The actor has had an impressive career with roles as Seneca Crane in The Hunger Games, Doyle in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, Pete’s Dragon, Mission: Impossible - Fallout, American Horror Story and Yellowstone (whew)! But, wouldn’t it be interesting to see what he could do with a leading role and perhaps as a more seasoned Superman. We’ve seen the origin story quite a few times now, how does Clark Kent deal with things once he’s been at it for a while?

Of course no Superman would be a good one without a solid vision, script and filmmaker. We’ll have to wait and see how the future of Kal-El shakes out. Until then, vote for your favorite pick in the poll below or comment on your own choice.

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It has been well reported that Simon Kinberg’s Dark Phoenix underwent some reshoots that drastically changed the movie’s ending. The director himself told us during the London press junket that he made these changes to aim for a more grounded and team-focused conclusion. Other outlets have reported that the change was to make sure that Dark Phoenix wasn’t too similar to Captain Marvel and other comic-book movies that reached theaters before it.

But what, exactly, happened in this original ending, before the reshoots moved the combustible conclusion to the inside of a moving train? Tye Sheridan, who plays Cyclops in the new X-Men movie, was a guest on the ReelBlend podcast. He opened up about the filming of the X-Men sequel, and shared some very specific details about the original ending, which they shot before having to re-do the action.

According to Sheridan, the final battle was going to take place at the United Nations in New York City. We’d assume that the team would go there after confronting Jean on the streets of New York where she was with Jessica Chastain’s character, Vuk. That sequence remains in the final cut, but from there, the X-Men are detained and transported on a train to a larger holding facility. Only, that was the reshoot. According to Sheridan:

Skrulls? Yeah, that makes a hell of a lot more sense now. Jessica Chastain’s alien life forms in Dark Phoenix were mysterious, identified as the D’Bari in a subtitle shown early in the film. In the Dark Phoenix comics, the D’Bari had their home planet destroyed by the Phoenix force, but they didn’t play a larger part in the story beyond that.

The Skrulls, meanwhile, often clashed with the X-Men in the pages of the Marvel Comics, and it would make sense why Simon Kinberg would want to introduce the shape-shifting aliens in Dark Phoenix. And yet, Captain Marvel made significant use of the Skrulls, so I could also see Marvel President Kevin Feige telling Kinberg to change his aliens from Skrulls to D’Bari to avoid confusion.

Now the question becomes, will we ever see this original ending as part of maybe a director’s cut home video release? Tye Sheridan isn’t sure, but from what he told the ReelBlend hosts, they for sure shot an official version of the sequence, so it’s finished somewhere.

Release the Kinberg cut! I'm kidding. Dark Phoenix ended up in a difficult spot. It started production long before Disney officially took over Fox. And the way that it concluded, it appeared that they wanted to creatively leave a door open to tell more X-Men stories with these actors. But because of the behind the scenes dealings, this iteration of the X-Men ended here, and fans kind of chose not to see the culmination of the 12-film saga.

Dark Phoenix opened to a lackluster $33 million over the weekend, losing out on the top spot at the box office to The Secret Life of Pets 2. An original ending wasn’t going to help Dark Phoenix. It merely feels like audiences are ready for these characters to slide over into the MCU, which likely won’t happen for a few years. But it is interesting to hear from Tye Sheridan what he remembers filming as part of his original Dark Phoenix shoot.

To listen to part of Sheridan’s interview on the ReelBlend podcast, press play on the player below. This is the non-spoiler bit of the conversation. We will have more spoiler talk from Sheridan later in the week, but we really just wanted to get this part of the conversation out, for curious X-Men and Marvel fans.

What will be next for the X-Men franchise? They’ll likely go on the shelf for a while. Marvel Studios probably has its slate of Phase Four movies mapped out. And even if one of the newly acquired Fox properties were to transition to the big screen as part of the MCU, my personal guess would be The Fantastic Four. There even have been a few rumors that the FF could be headed to theaters by 2021, though nothing has been confirmed by Marvel as of yet.

The next official MCU movie will be Sony and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Far From Home, which drops in theaters on July 2. As for the X-Men, Dark Phoenix is in theaters as we speak, so check it out, if you haven’t yet already.

The X-Men franchise is coming to a close. Not necessarily by choice, but more by circumstance. Dark Phoenix, which opens in theaters tonight, will serve as the last X-Men movie made under this existing banner, and likely will be revived by Marvel Studios as part of the MCU in years to come.

Tye Sheridan, who plays Cyclops in the two most recent X-Men movies, joins the ReelBlend podcast this week to discuss his time in the role, his views on the series potentially going to the MCU, some behind-the-scenes secrets on the filming of these huge X-Men movies, and so much more.

Naturally, because Sheridan also played Wade Watts in Ready Player One – a beloved movie for the ReelBlend guys – we also had to pepper him with questions ab out filming that movie and working with Steven Spielberg. Tye can text Spielberg any time he wants. That makes Kevin super jealous.

Press play on this week’s episode. It’s a great listen!

In addition to the cool Dark Phoenix talk, the guys this week contributed more insight into Christopher Nolan’s next movie, Tenet. They break down the trailer for James Mangold’s Ford v Ferrari. Jake and Sean review Godzilla: King of the Monsters. And Jake tells everyone why they should be watching Chernobyl on HBO.

ReelBlend is a weekly podcast that we do on CinemaBlend. You can download the latest episode (and all of our past episodes) for FREE on our iTunes page! Visit. Subscribe. Like and comment. Review! Apple loves when you have star ratings and reviews, so if you listened, and you liked it (or even if you didn't), let us know. We also are on Spotify. And Google Play. And basically everywhere that you download podcasts. So download us.

Meanwhile, follow the guys on Social Media! We have an official Twitter feed for the show, so follow @ReelBlend. In addition, follow the guys at @Sean_OConnell, @JakesTakesand @KevinMcCarthyTV.

Looking back, the X-Men franchise was key in the development of the modern comic book movie genre, and 19 years after it started it's still serving up superhero shenanigans. While the Disney-Fox deal has certainly changed what the future could look like for the franchise, there are still a lot of possibilities for interesting-looking spin-offs, not to mention new takes on previously shown characters and events which the folks at Disney and Marvel are surely already working to figure out. Not to be forgotten yet, however, is the main series of films, and it's the next chapter that we're here to discuss today.

After a relatively quick production period, but lots of delays, X-Men: Dark Phoenix is now finally less than a week away from release nationwide. But what is it about? Who is making it? What characters can we expect to appear? We cover all of these questions and more in our What We Know So Far guide below, so read on and learn!

What Have We Seen From Dark Phoenix?

It's been a long road, but September 26, 2018 finally delivered the first trailer from the highly anticipated movie. While that first look went heavy on the stress caused to Jean by meeting with the Phoenix force, and the resulting toll that will take on her friends and the world around her, the final trailer (above) gave us a better sense of some of the other action. This includes cool scenes of that meeting and a lot of the space action that would have led to it.

What Is Dark Phoenix's Release Date?

While June 7, 2019 will finally see Dark Phoenix hit theaters, it was a long road to get there. In 2017, the Marvel Cinematic Universe achieved something never before seen in Hollywood: releasing three franchise titles in the span of one calendar year. Well, in 2018 the X-Men movies were ready to compete. January through June should have seen both Josh Boone's The New Mutants and David Leitch's Deadpool 2 unleashed on the world, with 20th Century Fox is saving X-Men: Dark Phoenix for the winter months, having set it to come out on November 2, 2018.

That changed with some shakeups to scheduling in January and March of 2018, though. First, The New Mutants was pushed from April 13, 2018, to February 22, 2019, then to August 2, 2019 and now it rests at April 3, 2020. Dark Phoenix retained its November release date through the first scheduling change, but late March saw the superhero film get pushed to February 2019.

But then, just two days after the first trailer was released in late September 2018, Fox did more shuffling and set Dark Phoenix down in June 2019. With the exception of Deadpool and Logan, which hit theaters in the first quarters of their respective years, the X­-Men movies have traditionally been spring and summer releases, which makes this new strategy fall more in line with what we generally see.

While February is no longer a stranger to comic book blockbusters in the modern era, thanks to the aforementioned Deadpool and the recent, completely massive success of Black Panther, this release makes a lot more sense for the film. Rumors on the date change have suggested that the studio believes X-Men: Dark Phoenix will simply perform better then, especially in China, which went crazy for the trailer after it came out.

What Is Dark Phoenix's Rating?

Unlike the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the DC Extended Universe, the X-Men franchise has been a bit more experimental when it comes to the ratings of their comic book movies -- and it's resulted in some incredible success. Even though audiences under 18 couldn't see them without a parent or guardian, the aforementioned Deadpool and Logan both managed to bring in tons of cash appealing to more mature audiences. Because of these wins, there are now ratings conversations to be had about many developing superhero titles, but you can bet that X-Men: Dark Phoenix won't be rocking the boat.

To date, all of the main X-Men titles -- including X-Men, X2: X-Men United, X-Men: The Last Stand, X-Men: First Class, X-Men: Days of Future Past and X-Men: Apocalypse -- have all been PG-13, and that trend will continue with X-Men: Dark Phoenix. It surely will have (mostly bloodless) violence and thrilling sequences that might be too much for young viewers, but don't expect tons of gore, nudity or profanity.

Who Is Directing Dark Phoenix?

Simon Kinberg has been an important part of the X-Men world for years. He first became involved back in 2006 when he was hired to write the script for Brett Ratner's X-Men: The Last Stand, but has really been a key player ever since X-Men: First Class. Starting with that 2011 movie he has produced all of the franchises' features, and he is also a credited co-writer on X-Men: Days of Future Past and X-Men: Apocalypse. He's also done script work on Dark Phoenix, but the bigger story is the fact that he's making the film as his directorial debut.

It's not often that you see a filmmaker dipping his toe into directing with a major superhero blockbuster, but he does have a good amount of experience within the industry in the last 15 years. We can't say much for the style we expect him to bring to X-Men: Dark Phoenix, but that's just another part of what we're anticipating when we head to the theater.

What Is Dark Phoenix About?

The Dark Phoenix Saga is one of the most famous storylines in the history of Marvel Comics - which fully explains why this movie will actually be the second big screen attempt at adapting it. The franchise tried to put its own spin on the familiar narrative with X-Men: The Last Stand in 2006, but it's widely agreed that the job was botched. Following the continuity-changing events of X-Men: Days of Future Past, the movies saw an opportunity to try and tell the story again, and that's what we're getting in Simon Kinberg's X-Men: Dark Phoenix.

Set a decade after the events of X-Men: Apocalypse (following a pattern set up by the previous two movies), Dark Phoenix is set in the early 1990s, and is set in a world that has changed quite a lot. In the 1980s people everywhere knew about the existence of mutants, but now the X-Men are basically rock stars. Under the leadership of Professor X (James McAvoy), the team is known worldwide for their heroics, and celebrated for them.

All good streaks come to an end, however, and the X-Men find theirs come to a conclusion in outer space. During a cosmic mission, an accident occurs involving what they believe to be a solar flare, but this energy merges with Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) in the process. It's found it greatly enhances her powers, but the team begins to witness some serious changes in her personality, and her lack of control over her new powers.

Those familiar with the Dark Phoenix Saga from the comics -- which is an arc big enough to span two feature films -- will recognize that this doesn't exactly match up with the source material, but it certainly is a hell of a lot closer than what X-Men: The Last Stand delivered. There is still a lot that we don't know about the story take and the adaptation, but we obviously don't have long until we can learn more.

Jean Grey

Jean Grey has been an important character in the X-Men movies from the very beginning, originally played by Famke Janssen, but now she is in her second generation. While Jean was initially introduced as a teacher at Xavier's School For Gifted Youngsters, X-Men: Apocalypse was the first film in the canon to show her as a student, brought to life by Game of Thrones star Sophie Turner.

Like many of her fellow X-Men in that film, the young telepath/telekinetic was only just starting to get a handle on her special mutation when she was doing battle with Apocalypse -- but, all the same, still demonstrated some incredible power. We can assume that her abilities and her control over said abilities will be much better at the start of X-Men: Dark Phoenix (there's a lot Professor X can teach in a decade), but even those practiced strengths will be nothing compared to what she is able to do when imbued with the Phoenix Force.

As powerful as Jean is naturally, her abilities intensely escalate when she is transformed into Phoenix, to the point where she becomes one of the most powerful beings in the universe. Opening stargates, destroying matter at the subatomic level, and generating cosmic fire are only a few of the scary skills in her arsenal, but also certainly not helpful is the way that the power tends to corrupt the user.

Charles Xavier a.k.a. Professor X

Going back to X-Men: First Class, we've watched Charles Xavier a.k.a. Professor X come a long way. He earned his doctorate at the age of 30, shortly thereafter establishing Xavier's School For Gifted Youngsters, and through X-Men: Days of Future Past and X-Men: Apocalypse we've watched him evolve into the legendary leader we've always known that he would become.

By the time we catch up with him in Dark Phoenix, Professor X will have 30 years of leadership under his belt, but evidently he somewhat becomes a victim of his own bravado. He is very proud of the students that he has taught, and blissful with the reputation and popularity that the X-Men have received. There are obvious positive sides to this, but, unfortunately, the confidence also leads him to send his team into outer space for a mission that they aren't prepared for, leading to Jean Grey's accident.

As a leader and a teacher, Professor X has a very important responsibility when it comes to the X-Men, and one can imagine this mistake having a crucial impact on his arc in X-Men: Dark Phoenix. That said, he shouldn't have a ton of time to devote to self-reflection and self-flagellation if he's properly responding to the threat that the titular force represents.

Scott Summers a.k.a. Cyclops

It's no secret that the X-Men movies don't have a great track record of doing right by Scott Summers a.k.a. Cyclops. The character has been a fan favorite in the comics for decades, but on the big screen he was totally sidelined by a Wolverine-centric approach that painted him plainly as a romantic competitor for the heart of Jean Grey. It's partially because of this shortcoming that the franchise hit the restart button on Cyclops in X-Men: Apocalypse, and now they'll have the chance to properly explore the character in X-Men: Dark Phoenix, portrayed by Tye Sheridan.

Cyclops was only shown wearing his famous visor in the final moments of X-Men: Apocalypse, still learning how to control his optic blasts, but he should be a seasoned veteran with the equipment when we catch up with him. His specific role in the Dark Phoenix storyline still seems to be based on Scott's romantic bond with Jean Grey, with him trying to convince everyone she can be saved when she seems too far gone and dangerous to be allowed to live.

Ororo Munroe a.k.a. Storm

Within the post-X-Men: Days of Future Past continuity, we don't have much experience watching Ororo Munroe a.k.a. Storm as a hero. Portrayed by Alexandra Shipp in X-Men: Apocalypse, we got a glimpse of her upbringing in Egypt, but the titular villain was able to get to her far faster than Professor X. She was enlisted as one of the Four Horsemen, but the all-powerful blue mutant's Svengali-like hold over her was shattered when she saw her hero, Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) in battle. Following her change of heart, Storm started fighting alongside the X-Men, and at the end of the movie we saw her suited up as a full-fledged member of the team.

Unfortunately, that's basically where details stop in regards to what we can expect from Storm in X-Men: Dark Phoenix. Like everyone else, she will be 10 years older and wiser, and have much greater control over her abilities to control the weather, but we don't really know much more than that. Given how limited the character's time on screen has classically been -- going back to the Halle Berry era -- hopefully a nice chunk of narrative will be devoted to her.

Kurt Wagner a.k.a. Nightcrawler

We first got to see the fan-favorite teleporting mutant known as Nightcrawler up on the big screen in X2: X-Men United... but his run didn't exactly last long. Despite putting on a fantastic performance, Alan Cumming didn't return to reprise the part in X-Men: The Last Stand, and in the movie world Nightcrawler was ultimately put on ice for 13 years. That unfortunate trend ended in 2016 with Kodi Smit-McPhee playing a younger version of the character in X-Men: Apocalypse, and next we'll get to see him perform his advanced circus-like antics in Dark Phoenix.

In X-Men: Apocalypse, Nightcrawler was basically used to demonstrate that the world was accepting of his odd appearance -- but we didn't really get to learn much about him. Hopefully Simon Kinberg is able to successfully balance X-Men: Dark Phoenix as a true ensemble, and give Kurt Wagner the proper moments to shine that fans want to see, and that his legacy deserves.

Peter Maximoff a.k.a. Quicksilver

The last seventeen years have brought us an endless list of ridiculously awesome big screen superhero moments, but the usage of Evan Peters' Peter Maximoff a.k.a. Quicksilver in both X-Men: Days of Future Past and X-Men: Apocalypse are certainly near the top. Bryan Singer made impressive use of modern filmmaking technology to craft sequences unlike anything we've ever seen with a speedster character, and in doing so also happened to create two of the most memorable movie music moments of the young century. He's an exciting presence in this franchise, which is why we're stoked that he will be back in X-Men: Dark Phoenix.

The full details regarding Quicksilver's development as a character have not yet been revealed, but we can probably take a few guesses regarding where he is at. Given his personality type, one can imagine that he is absolutely loving the celebrity status that the X-Men have earned, and is happy to take advantage of it every moment that he can -- which is pretty often given the way he moves.

We'll have to wait and see if he winds up reaching out to Magneto to reveal that he is his son (if that hasn't already happened in the last decade), but that situation is made tricky given the status of Magneto at the start of Dark Phoenix, which we'll get into a bit later.

Hank McCoy a.k.a. Beast

Fans were initially disappointed when Hank McCoy a.k.a. Beast didn't make the roster for Bryan Singer's first X-Men movie, but ever since X-Men: First Class he has been a key player. Portrayed by Nicholas Hoult, we have watched the character undergo some serious change -- some quite literally -- but he's certainly developed into the hero that Marvel readers have loved for decades.

Beast will once again be back fighting the good fight in X-Men: Dark Phoenix, serving alongside Jean Grey, Cyclops, Storm, Nightcrawler, Quicksilver, and Mystique under the guidance of Professor X. Hank still seems to have control over his appearance, but we do get a lot of him totally blue and furry during the trailer, so we'll probably be treated to his natural state a lot of time, especially during the action scenes.

Raven Darkhölme a.k.a. Mystique

Similar to Wolverine, Raven Darkhölme a.k.a. Mystique wasn't always a core member of the X-Men character lineup in the comics, but the films have certainly treated her that way. Rebecca Romijn was very memorable in the original X-Men trilogy, but the fact that she has been played by A-lister Jennifer Lawrence since X-Men: First Class has kept her in the franchise's spotlight. At the end of X-Men: Apocalypse she was firmly established as one of the good guys, and apparently that's exactly where she starts at the beginning of Dark Phoenix as well.

Mystique has classically been an enemy of the X-Men, but now that she's a part of the titular team, we'll see her take on a leadership position because she's older and has been fighting longer than most of the other X-Men. It also looks like she'll handle Jean Grey's transformation into the Phoenix by pointing out some important truths to Charles, and by being a true leader and trying to help Jean even though she knows how dangerous she's become.

Erik Lehnsherr a.k.a. Magneto

At the end of X-Men: Apocalypse Michael Fassbender's Erik Lehnsherr a.k.a. Magneto aided in the reconstruction of Xavier's School For Gifted Youngsters, but he made the decision not to stick around. Having lost his wife and daughter, and nearly aiding in the destruction of the planet, he decided that it was best that he leave and start a life for himself elsewhere in the world. It's noteworthy that X-Men: Dark Phoenix will address the question of "Where?" and it turns out the answer is super interesting: the island of Genosha.

While Genosha has a bit of a spotty history in Marvel Comics, in Dark Phoenix it will be portrayed as a safe haven for mutants who can't find a home anywhere else in the world -- and it's where Magneto has worked to try and rebalance his life. He finds himself involved with the main narrative because Jean Grey seeks him out for guidance in the midst of his transformation.

The Mysterious Villain

Yes, that's a super vague heading, but the reality is that we don't have much to work with in this area. It's been confirmed that Jessica Chastain will be playing the central villain in X-Men: Dark Phoenix, but in a move that seriously increases our curiosity, the folks behind the film will not identify her character. It has been said that she is an "otherworldly shapeshifter" who is out to control the power of the Phoenix, but nothing else is known beyond that.

We just have a few day now until X-Men: Dark Phoenix is in theaters, so be sure to head out and get the rest of the answers to what this movie has in store for audiences for yourself!

Thanks to his fourth wall-breaking antics and his encyclopedia knowledge of pop culture (both in the X-Men universe and outside of it), Deadpool is a perfect terrain for cameos, if you think about it. The character knows no reverence and he likes to keep people on their toes, particularly through his fast-moving mouth. In that spirit, when it came time to make Deadpool 2, the original film's staggering popularity paved the way for a smörgåsbord of surprise guest appearances, including a few you might've missed!

Therefore, we wanted to take this opportunity to break down all the surprise cameos that were found in 2018's superhero sequel. Because even upon first or second viewing, there's a possibility that you missed a few of the film's biggest and most shocking cameos in Deadpool 2. With that, we want to let you in on the scoop. And be sure to let us know if there are any we missed. Also, it should be a given, but some of these cameos require a spoiler or two. Just a heads-up if you haven't seen the movie.

Matt Damon As "Redneck #2"

There's a very good chance that you missed Matt Damon's cameo in Deadpool 2. The actor is genuinely unrecognizable in the superhero sequel, adopting very heavy make-up, including a prosthetic nose, a fake beard and a body suit with an extended beer gut to disguise his normally-ripped physique. Damon was also not officially officially credited either, adopting the one-time pseudonym of "Dickie Greenleaf" in the credits (a reference to Damon's 1999 film, The Talented Mr. Ripley). Nevertheless, the role of "Redneck #2" was played by none other than Matt Damon himself.

While his voice might've been a giveaway for some people, there are many folks who had no clue Matt Damon was in the film. In fact, there is a good chance that some of you didn't know until you read this article. There's no judgment here; until I started writing this article, I didn't even know myself! In any case, if you skip to the 32-minute mark exactly, you will see Matt Damon in a field, throwing back beers and talking rather extensively about toilet paper with his friend before a time-traveling Cable (Josh Brolin) walks up to their car, electrocutes them and drives away with their truck.

Brad Pitt As "Vanisher"

It's a blink-and-you-miss it cameo, but at the same time, there's a good chance that Brad Pitt's surprise three-second appearance in Deadpool 2 was the biggest cameo you caught in the movie. Throughout the film, the running gag with the invisible, silent character of Vanisher is that it's unclear if he actually exists or if he's just a bunch of empty space. But when the X-Force find themselves killed in increasingly graphic ways due to Deadpool's miscalculations with the wind, there is a brief moment where Vanisher's parachute is caught in the wind, causing him to be electrocuted, then burst into flames.

In that moment, which occurs 73 minutes into the film, we finally get a visible glance at Vanisher. And it's revealed to be none other than Brad Pitt. Because the cameo is so fast, there might be reason to believe that it's just a CG-ed version of the actor, but it appears that it was actually Brad Pitt. Somehow, the filmmakers found time in the A-lister's very busy schedule for the actor to make quick (but very memorable) appearance in the film.

James McAvoy As "Charles Xavier"

One of the best recurring jokes in the original Deadpool movie is the often-commented absence of actual X-Men in this X-Men property. There are only two other characters from the series who made appearances in that film, and Deadpool is often disgruntled by their non-appearances in his film. Sure enough, when it came time for the much-anticipated sequel, which was accompanied with a bigger budget and a higher profile release, there was the strong likelihood of at least a few well-known X-Men making an appearance. But their cameos needed to fit the style of the film, and the filmmakers wanted to honor the winking satire that is crucial to the film's irreverent success.

So, yes, Charles Xavier does make an appearance in Deadpool 2. However, Deadpool himself never gets to meet the character. 29 minutes into the sequel, while the title character is babbling on about the lack of X-Men found in the house, it's revealed that Charles Xavier and several other X-Men are indeed there, but they're intentionally avoiding contact with the foul-mouthed merchant. It's a single shot and another sequence where if you turn your head at the wrong time, you'll miss it entirely. But for the fans who were paying close attention, you got your chance to see several high-profile X-Men, even if Deadpool himself missed his chance to get acquainted.

Nicolas Hoult As "Beast"

Similar to James McAvoy's Professor X, Nicholas Hoult's Beast was also in the X-Men residence as Deadpool was ranting about the dearth of X-Men to be found in his movies. He was the one who was the closest to the sliding door and the one who heard Deadpool coming their way, as the Merc with a Mouth made his long-winded spiel about his movies making more money than the person who invented pants.

The blue mutant ultimately wasted no time trying to discreetly close the doors in the hopes that Deadpool wouldn't discover their appearance. And it seems like he did it successfully, as Deadpool was none the wiser about them being right beside him. Since he's in the center frame, there's a good chance you saw Beast. Nevertheless, it was a surprise — and welcome — cameo, even if Deadpool himself didn't know about it.

Evan Peters As "Quicksilver"

In addition to Beast and Professor X, Deadpool also missed his opportunity to meet Quicksilver. The scene-stealer was in the room with several other X-Men during the aforementioned cameo-filled sequence, and ironically he wasn't quick to close the door when Deadpool was threatening to find more X-Men in the residence. Nevertheless, while the cameo went by in a flash, Evan Peters was there. And gone.

Tye Sheridan As "Cyclops"

Tye Sheridan's Cyclops hasn't been seen much in the X-Men universe. Beyond his appearance in X-Men: Apocalypse, his character has otherwise been played by James Marsden in the first three movies. But we'll get a better chance at seeing Sheridan's take on the character when he appears in this summer's long-delayed Dark Phoenix. And in the meantime, he got a chance to play the role (in very brief fashion) during this cameo with his fellow X-Men in hiding.

Alexandra Shipp As "Storm"

Similar to Tye Sheridan, Alexandra Shipp has played her variation of Storm for only a brief window of time. But we'll see her take on a bigger role in this summer's X-Men: Dark Phoenix. And she made a cameo in Deadpool 2, smirking in the corner as Deadpool was trying to find his fellow X-Men.

Kodi-Smit McPhee As "Nightcrawler"

Much like his other two X-Men: Apocalypse co-stars, Kodi-Smit McPhee is still fairly newly acquainted to the X-Men universe. But he was among the X-Men seen (in hiding) during this memorable sequence in Deadpool 2.

Alan Tudyk as "Luke, i.e. Redneck #1"

Also in this scene, if a little more recognizable than his co-star Matt Damon, is Alan Tudyk. The actor is given less of a disguise (basically just a bandana) and he doesn't have as many lines as his scene partner. But he does get a name: Luke, though the shortly-seen character is also referred to as "Redneck #1." Considering that their on-screen conversation is filled with extensive potty humor, those numerals are probably intentional.

Luke, i.e. "Redneck #1," doesn't get as much to do in this cameo as his famous co-star. And considering that Alan Tudyk isn't as much of a household name as Matt Damon, that might not be surprising. Nevertheless, the cameo is certainly a fun one, and definitely an unexpected one, for fans of the veteran character actor and prominent voice actor.

Ryan Reynolds as "Juggernaut"

This one might not technically qualify as a cameo, since Juggeranut plays a prominent role in the third act. But there's a good chance that people do not know that in addition to his role as Wade Wilson/Deadpool, Reynolds also provided his voice to the role of Juggernaut. Making his first official appearance around 82 minutes into the film, Juggeranut becomes the final foe for which Deadpool must defeat. And it's hard for him to do so, not only due to his massive size and figure, but because Deadpool is constantly geeking out at the sight of such a titan in the comics.

While Juggernaut is typically a man of few words, he does speak from time to time throughout Deadpool 2, and when he does speak, his voice is lent by Ryan Reynolds in the surprise turn. Juggernaut was previously introductied into the X-Men movies in X-Men: The Last Stand. Much like Deadpool himself, he was given a second chance with Deadpool 2. So it's perhaps only fitting that Reynolds provided his voice to the oversized part as well.

Whew. There are all the big name cameos we caught in Deadpool 2. However, if you caught any other discreetly hidden cameos, feel free to let us know what is missing from our ranking in the comment section. And we'll be sure to keep you posted on all the latest movie news — X-Men related and otherwise — right here at CinemaBlend.

It's no secret that superhero movie are everywhere. Over the past few years, the comic book genre has become the most profitable of the film world, with various studios creating shared universes in an attempt to cash in. But before the MCU introduced serialized storytelling to the masses, there was Fox's X-Men franchise. Hitting theaters back beginning in 2000, a trio of movies was released in theaters before a new class of actors was introduced to reboot the property.

James Marsden was the first actor to bring Scott Summers/Cyclops to life in live-action, and played the character in the original X-Men trilogy (in addition to a quick cameo in Days of Future Past). Since then, two other actors have played younger version of the mutant, with Ready Player One's Tye Sheridan reprising his role in Dark Phoenix. And it turns out that Sheridan wrote his predecessor a sweet message when he was cast. As Marsden recently revealed:

Well, this is heart warming. While some actors might have a hard time seeing young talent take on their iconic roles, it seems that James Marsden is happy to see Tye Sheridan playing Cyclops in the silver screen. And that may be partly because the 22 year-old reached out to his predecessor in such a way.

The X-Men franchise is fascinating, thanks to its multiple timelines and just how many decades the property has covered. X-Men: The Last Stand was the finale of the original trilogy-- at least until Days of Future Past brought both generations of mutants together into one ambitious crossover movie. So when the character was eventually recast for movies like X-Men: Apocalypse, it's not like James Marsden was still that connected to the role.

Related: Does Marvel's 5-Year Plan Include The X-Men? Here's What Kevin Feige Says

Rather than being recast just to get a bigger name, Tye Sheridan's time as Cyclops is simply due to how time is being utilized in the franchise. The new Cyclops entered the narrative in X-Men: Apocalypse, as mutant who was new to both Xavier's School and superheroics. He ultimately stepped up to battle Oscar Isaac's title character, and audiences will catch up with a more experienced version of the hero in Dark Phoenix.

In his same conversation with Variety, James Marsden addressed Dark Phoenix's upcoming release, and expressed how excited he is to see that beloved comic book plot be adapted for the silver screen. As he put it:

What a class act. Despite leaving the role of Cyclops behind years ago, James Marsden is still a fan of the X-Men, and eager to see the iconic Jean Grey plot line on the silver screen in Dark Phoenix. And he's not the only one.

Tye Sheridan made a strong first outing as Scott Summers in X-Men: Apocalypse. Audiences watched as he blossomed with his abilities, and saw he and Sophie Turner's Jean Grey fall in love as young students. Scott didn't get his signature visor until Apocalypse's coda in the Danger Room, so we should expect Cyclops to be a much more capable fighter when he pops back up in Dark Phoenix.

While Cyclops was a supporting character in Apocalypse, it looks like the fan favorite mutant will have a larger focus when Dark Phoenix finally arrives in theaters. Once Jean goes out of control thanks the Phoenix Force, the other characters will be split regarding what they should do. But Scott should presumably always be on Jean's side, and will no doubt help fight for her humanity.

Tye Sheridan's letter to James Marsden seem to have went over really well for the Westworld actor, but not all of the new class of X-Men were quite so lucky. Alexandra Shipp took on the role of Storm in Apocalypse, and reached out to Halle Berry ahead of her debut. But her e-mail might have made her seem a bit too eager, and it doesn't look like Berry actually responded. Halle Berry is still hoping the character will someday get a spinoff, so perhaps the Oscar winner is hoping her Storm-ing days aren't over.

Dark Phoenix has a ton of pressure associated with it, as it may be the final installment of the X-Men franchise as we know it. Aside from capping off the last four movies' overarching narrative, the movie will also be the second attempt at adapting the beloved Dark Phoenix saga onto film. While the comic book story is far more complicated and involves the Hellfire Club, the fans are anxiously awaiting to see if 20th Century Fox got it right the second time.

X-Men: The Last Stand was the first live-action go at the Dark Phoenix Saga, and it left much to be desired. Jean's powers didn't come from the cosmic Phoenix Force, but were dormant in her from childhood. She rose from her watery grave at Alkali Lake, and unceremoniously kills off James Marsden's Cyclops and Professor X. She was ultimately manipulated by Magneto, before being killed by Wolverine in the film's final battle.

The Dark Phoenix trailers seems to tease a more comic book accurate version of the plot line, although the movie's various delays have given the fandom some pause. What's more, the upcoming blockbuster has the added pressure of being the grande finale in the larger franchise, as 20th Century Fox was officially acquired by Disney. So the pressure is certainly on to bring a satisfying conclusion to the larger narrative, as well as service Jean's story in a proper way.

Cyclops will return to the big screen when Dark Phoenix arrives in theaters on June 7th. In the meantime, check out our 2019 release list to plan your next trip to the movies.

It's no secret that superhero movies are everywhere. The genre is the most profitable one in the film world, with three separate shared universes fighting for box office dominance every few months. The X-Men franchise largely started it all, and is still going strong in the 18 years since Bryan Singer's first blockbuster hit theaters. While the fans are eager to see the horror inspired New Mutants and Ryan Reynolds' Deadpool 2, the franchise's main narrative will continue with X-Men: Dark Phoenix. Everyone has been teasing a dark journey for Sophie Turner's Jean Grey, and now Tye Sheridan seems to have confirmed one detail: Jean is going to lose it. He recently said,

It looks like Sophie Turner is going to really have time to shine in X-Men: Dark Phoenix. This is the franchise's second attempt to nail down Jean's most iconic comic book arc, and this one seems like it's going to take a serious toll on the character's psyche.

Tye Sheridan's comment to The Wrap also indicates that Dark Phoenix is going to be quite different than his debut appearance in X-Men: Apocalypse. Apocalypse misstepped by getting too caught up in the spectacle and action of it all. The final battle was quite long, and while we were facing a world ending threat, the stakes still never felt high. Aside from the title character, few characters actually perished from the battle.

But Dark Phoenix is going to be more of a drama, at least according to Tye Sheridan. Perhaps director Simon Kinberg heard the critical and audience feedback, and decided to become a bit more focused on character development and intimate scenes. This formula did wonders for James Mangold's Logan, which provided the closest look into the title character's psyche in the entire X-Men franchise.

While Tye Sheridan maintains the upcoming X-Men movie is more of a drama than a superhero film, there are sure to be some major thrills coming from Dark Phoenix. The film will take the team of mutants into space for the very first time, which is sure to be an exciting sequence. It's likely during this mission that Jean comes into contact with the Phoenix Force, although the power was teased to be within her during the events of Apocalypse. While Moira MacTaggert won't appear in the next film, hopefully the right mixture of action and heart can be inserted into the Dark Phoenix.

X-Men: Dark Phoenix will arrive in theaters November 2, 2018. In the meantime, check out our 2018 release list to plan your next trip to the movies.

Any time Steven Spielberg directs a movie it's a big deal. Any time a best-selling, fan-favorite novel gets a big screen adaptation, it's a big deal. When the two happen to combine, as they will for 2018's cinematic translation of Ernest Cline's pop culture saturated book Ready Player One, you guessed it, it's a big deal.

The Ready Player One movie is almost here, but it's been in development for years---even before Ernest Cline's novel hit bookstores in 2011, it already had a movie deal in place. Building up towards production, Steven Spielberg and company have been putting the pieces for the Ready Player One cast in place, and as we do with many major upcoming releases, we thought we'd take the opportunity run through everything we know so far about the project. Let's start with the most recent trailer for the film, which you can check out below!

Wow! If that view of the world Steven Spielberg has built for Ready Player One doesn't get you excited, then nothing will. OK, let's dive in to the details we have about the upcoming film!

Ready Player One's Release Date

In what was probably a very smart business move, the Ready Player One movie recently swapped out its release date. Why was this a smart move, you ask? Ready Player One is based on a popular book with a built in audience, along with one of the most revered modern directors, Steven Spielberg, at the helm---it has a lot going for it, right? Well, it was originally slated to open on December 15, 2017, but it has since been moved to March 30, 2018.

The December 2017 date was all well and good, until a little movie called Star Wars: The Last Jedi switched up its release date, and, wouldn't you know, the folks at Disney decided to open the next entry in the Star Wars saga on December 15, 2017. After the record breaking juggernaut that was Star Wars: The Force Awakens, even Steven Spielberg didn't want to mess with that far, far away galaxy, and the Ready Player One movie was pushed back and will now open in March 2018, where it won't have to go toe-to-toe with anything Star Wars related.

What Is Ready Player One Rated?

As we're still fairly early in the process, there's not much concrete news on the rating of the Ready Player One movie. Using what we know, however, we can make a relatively educated guess. With a few exceptions, Steven Spielberg doesn't usually stray into R-rated territory, at least outside of war movies like Saving Private Ryan, and weighty dramas like Schindler's List.

In addition to that, the Ready Player One book, while full of adventure and harrowing situations, never strays too far into more adult realms. The protagonist is fairly young, there's not much violence or sex to speak of---certainly nothing that can't be easily circumvented---and all in all, the subject matter is rather tame in the ways that might earn a movie a more restrictive rating. With all of this in mind, we guess the Ready Player One rating will be PG-13, but it's possible it'll get a PG rating. Maybe they'll let a curse word or two slip just to make sure it's not too wholesome.

What Is Ready Player One About?

Ready Player One takes place in the dystopian future of 2044. The world is an ugly, nasty, overcrowded place where most people live in "stacks," which are literally mobile homes piled on top of one another to near skyscraper heights. In this dismal setting, much of the population escapes into an expansive virtual reality world called OASIS, where people do everything from go to school, work, and even just hang out with friends in virtual basements on virtual couches.

When he died with no heirs, James Halliday, the creator of OASIS, revealed a massive pop-culture saturated puzzle, a kind of sprawling scavenger hunt. Whoever solves this riddle and finds Halliday's Easter Egg becomes the owner of OASIS and is immediately the richest, most powerful person on the planet. So, of course, everyone wants to be the winner, and these people are called "gunters," short for Egg hunters. This group includes the protagonist, Wade Watts, a poor kid from the Stacks, and the plot of the Ready Player One book follows his quest as he searches for the Easter Egg and clues, and the Ready Player One movie follows the same arc.

The Director

There are a number of elements that make a Ready Player One movie a difficult feat to accomplish. First, nearly every paragraph is saturated with references to films, comics, toys, TV shows, video games, and every facet of pop culture you can imagine. This means there are hundreds, if not thousands, of rights issues to clear. Second, much of the action of the Ready Player One book takes place in the virtual realm of OASIS, where characters control self-ascribed avatars.

With these hurdles to overcome, it's good that the Ready Player One movie is in the competent hands of a director like Steven Spielberg. With a resume that includes some of the biggest movies of all time, he'll have no problem working on this scope and scale. This is also far from his first science fiction rodeo, as he has shepherded a number of fantastic worlds to the big screen, including the likes of Jurassic Park, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, and The Adventures of Tintin, among others. There's also that little movie called E.T.

One of the earliest choices Steven Spielberg made about the Ready Player One movie was to remove references to his own work, of which there are many. But as difficult as this book may be to adapt, and how closely the rabid fan base will be watching, this isn't the first time that Spielberg has been behind adapting a beloved work to movie theaters. In fact, he recently gave fans a big screen version of Roald Dahl's The BFG. While Spielberg may not be including references to his own work in Ready Player One, all connections to the director will not be omitted. Steven Spielberg did confirm that we'll see Wade's Delorean in the movie. The iconic car was featured in the Spielberg-produced Back to the Future, and, as you can see from the trailer, it plays a notable role in Wade's adventure in Ready Player One.

Ready Player One's Writers

Another thing the Ready Player One movie adaptation has going for it is that one of the people adapting the novel for the screen is none other than Ernest Cline, the author of the Ready Player One book. If there's anyone who will take great care with the translation from the page to the screen, it's going to be the guy who ushered this world into being in the first place. So, even if there are changes made from the source material, those changes will be made by the man behind all of this in the first place.

While Ernest Cline is relatively young when it comes to screenwriting---his only other credit is the similarly pop culture obsessed comedy Fanboys---he'll have help in writing the Ready Player One movie. Zak Penn will be along for this particular ride, and with credits that include comic book movies like The Avengers, The Incredible Hulk, and a variety of X-Men movies, as well as an upcoming turn working on the script for Suicide Squad 2, he certainly has the geeky credentials to help bring the Ready Player One movie to vibrant life.

Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan)

The protagonist of the Ready Player One book, as well as Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One movie, is Wade Owen Watts. Wade is a poor kid from the Stacks of Oklahoma City, but he's whip smart, and because his home sucks and the outside world is all kinds of dreary, he spends most of his time in OASIS. He goes to school and hangs out with his online buddies, but must of his efforts go into guiding his OASIS avatar, Parzival---named for Percival from Arthurian legend---in a search for clues to find James Halliday's Easter Egg. This is really a pipe dream, as everyone else, including wealthy multinational companies, has been scouring OASIS and searching movies, comics, and more for hints for years with no success. But once Wade cracks a clue, it sets off a domino effect, where new discoveries, and stiff competition, come fast and furious until someone might just solve the riddle and win OASIS.

As Wade Watts is the main character of the book and, subsequently, the Ready Player One movie, it's a big, vital role, but Steven Spielberg and company found a strong actor to fill the part: Tye Sheridan. At just 21-years-old, Sheridan has already assembled in impressive resume with a number of strong, eye-catching roles in notable indie films and beyond. When your first role is in a Terrence Malick film, The Tree of Life in this case, people are going to pay attention, but he also turned heads in David Gordon Green's Joe, Jeff Nichols' Mud, and the true-life drama The Stanford Prison Experiment. He even dipped his toe in the horror-comedy pool recently with Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse. However, it is his more recent role that will bring him, by far, the most notice, as he took over the superhero role of Cyclops in X-Men: Apocalypse. By the time the Ready Player One movie roles around, he might pack some additional star power.

Art3mis (Olivia Cooke)

Wade Watts is far from alone on his journey in Ready Player One. He has a number of friends, associates, and well-wishers who lend him a helping hand along the way, but none are as important as Art3mis. The OASIS avatar alter ego of Samantha Evelyn Cook, Art3mis is another famous gunter, one that Wade also happens to have a major cyber crush on, which complicates things as they're in direct competition. Throughout the course of the narrative of Ready Player One, Art3mis is by turns a rival, a partner in crime, an ally, and a love interest for Wade. Again, due to the online nature of much of their relationship---Art3mis is from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, while Wade starts out in Oklahoma City---it will be interesting to see how their relationship develops and is portrayed in the Ready Player One movie.

One of the things that was revealed about the plot of the film a few months ago is that Wade and Samantha will actually meet in real life during the course of the movie. This was quite a surprise, as the two characters don't meet up outside of the OASIS in the book until the very end of the story. So, unless the photo that was released of the two together is a dream sequence or from the last few shots in the movie, it seems that Spielberg and the writers have decided to have them spend more time with each other in the depressing real world of Ready Player One.

As Art3mis is one of the key characters in the Ready Player One book, it's a rather important role to cast in the film. And, as with casting Wade, Steven Spielberg and company went with another young up and comer, British actress Olivia Cooke---who was actually cast before Tye Sheridan was cast as Wade. Similar to her co-star, Cooke has put together a stellar list of acting credits at just 25-years-old. Getting her start on British television in 2012 with Blackout and The Secret of Crikey Hall (and a One Direction video), Cooke is probably best known for her run on the Psycho prequel series, Bates Motel, which wrapped up in 2017. She also recently starred in the low-budget horror flick Ouija, the well-received indie dramedy Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, and has a few other films on the way in 2018.

Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn)

Every good story needs a villain, and Ready Player One has one in the form of Nolan Sorrento. Not only does Wade Watts have to contend with other individual Egg-obsessed gunters nipping at his heels every step of the way, a number of groups and companies are after the prize as well. The biggest of these is Innovative Online Industries, a multinational corporation which wants OASIS because, simply, it's the most valuable commodity on the planet and would instantly make them the most powerful entity to ever exist. While James Halliday wanted OASIS to be for the people, IOI would use it to make all of the money. A high-ranking official with IOI, Nolan Sorrento is the head of their Oology division, the sector charged with searching for the Egg. He's a scheming company stooge and is the primary antagonist of Ready Player One, serving as the embodiment of corporate greed. Although, some comments from the actor playing Sorrento seem to suggest that there may be some changes to the character for the purposes of the movie.

To play the role of Nolan Sorrento and bring the villain to life, Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One found a wonderful actor in the person of Ben Mendelsohn. The 47-year-old Australian character actor has been around since the mid-1980s, delivering memorable performances, but things really kicked into high gear with 2010's crime saga Animal Kingdom. From there, he's delivered knock out performances in the likes of Killing Them Softly, The Place Beyond the Pines, and Mississippi Grind, which all led to a major part in Star Wars: Rogue One in 2016, where he played a key villain. If you've watched Netflix's series Bloodline, which you really should if you haven't, he brings an ominous air and a level of menace, even when his character appears to be playing nice, and this trait will serve him well in bringing Nolan Sorrento to the big screen in Ready Player One.

Ogden Morrow (Simon Pegg)

Creating an expansive, always evolving virtual world like OASIS is a herculean task, and in Ready Player One, James Halliday didn't undertake it alone. He enlisted the help of his friend and compatriot Ogden Morrow. Morrow's relationship and story with Halliday has many parallels to that of Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. Because of his stake in the company, Morrow is one of the richest people in the world of 2044, though he has retreated into seclusion on his rural Oregon estate. He's a good man, with a kind heart, and using his avatar alter ego, The Great and Powerful Og, he plays in important role, though not a huge foreground one, in the journey of Wade Watts and the others in Ready Player One.

As mentioned many times elsewhere, Ready Player One is a book saturated with pop culture and nerdy references of all kinds, and the Ready Player One movie will be the same in that regard. Given that, the film found the perfect actor to fill the role of Ogden Morrow: Simon Pegg. The Star Trek Beyond and Shaun of the Dead star is well known for his penchant for all things geeky, and it only makes sense that he'd be attracted to a story like that of Ready Player One. Ogden Morrow is also very friendly, engaging character---kind of a wing-nut hermit---described as a mix between Albert Einstein and Santa Claus. Pegg has an inherently likable quality as an actor that will serve him well in this role, and it's easy to imagine him having an absolute blast with this part.

Additional Characters

Other cast additions to Ready Player One includes one of Steven Spielberg's go-to actors, Mark Rylance, who will play none other than James Halliday himself in the movie. Rylance's recent collaboration with Spielberg was The BFG, and he also starred in Bridge of Spies. Given how closely he's worked with Steven Spielberg, it's no surprise that he would come on board RPO in such a crucial role.

Meanwhile, former Silicon Valley star T.J. Miller was among the late cast additions for Ready Player One, signing on for the trolling role of i-R0k in the film. Given Miller's keen ability to provide comic relief (see his moments of hilarity in Deadpool for recent evidence of that), it should be interesting to see what he brings to RPO. According to Miller, the part has been beefed up from the book, where i-R0k was a very minor player, and he's now a bounty hunter who will take out OASIS players for the right price. Miller has described this new version of the character as a funny Boba Fett, which will certainly be wild to watch once the film opens.

Lined up to play the Gunter known as Daito in RPO is Japanese musician Win Morisaki. He's best known for being the lead vocalist in the boy band PrizmaX.

Game of Thrones actress Hannah John-Kamen has also joined the Ready Player One cast, though her role has not been revealed.

Following The BFG over at Disney last year, Steven Spielberg's next directorial project is another theatrical adaptation of a popular book: Ready Player One, originally written by Ernest Cline. For those who haven't read the original 2011 novel, much of the story takes place in the OASIS, a virtual universe where people can escape the hardships of the real world to both game MMORPG style or just take part in its societal offerings. Fans have been wondering how the OASIS world will look in the Ready Player One movie, and according to Tye Sheridan, who plays lead protagonist Wade Watts, it was accomplished via motion-capture technology. Sheridan explained:

Tye Sheridan, who right now is best known for playing Cyclops in X-Men: Apocalypse, also mentioned beforehand in this Collider interview that roughly 60% of Ready Player One will take place in the OASIS, with the remaining 40% set in the normal world. So rather than go the full CGI route with the scenes set in OASIS, Steven Spielberg opted to make full use of his actors by having them act out the scenes in motion capture, which sounds like a wise course of action. Steven Spielberg already has plenty of motion capture experience with The Adventures of Tintin and The BFG, and even though these characters are being represented in the virtual world by avatars, their movements and actions will look much more realistic.

During the interview, Tye Sheridan also addressed the avatar situation in Ready Player One, admitting that he still hasn't learned specific details about how Wade's avatar, Parzival, will look. As he put it:

Set in the year 2044, Ready Player One takes place on an Earth that's been ravaged by global warming, energy crises and economic hardship. Wade Watts, who lives in poverty, is one of the many people who is searching for a secret treasure left behind left by OASIS's creator, James Halliday, before his death. Hidden somewhere within the virtual world, the person who finds said treasure would receive Halliday's fortune and control over OASIS. When Wade accidentally stumbles upon the first legitimate clue, he'll not only gain fame across the world, but also be targeted by sinister forces also after Halliday's treasure.

Aside from Tye Sheridan as Wade/Parzival, the main Ready Player One cast includes Olivia Cooke as Sam Cook/Art3mis, Mark Rylance as James Halliday/Anorak, Ben Mendelsohn as Nolan Sorrento, Simon Pegg as Ogden Morrow, Win Morisaki as Toshiro Yoshiaki/Daito, Philip Zhao as Akihide Karatsu/Shoto, Hannah John-Kamen, Letitia Wright and T.J. Miller as i-R0k.

Ready Player One will be released in theaters on March 30, 2018.

SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains massive spoilers for X-Men: Apocalypse. If you have not yet seen the film, and don’t wish for any details to be revealed before your screening, we recommend clicking away to another one of our wonderful articles.

Like the X-Men movies that came before it, X-Men: Apocalypse is another massive ensemble blockbuster that takes a mix of familiar and new characters and navigates them along different arcs that take them to different places by the time the story ends. Taking place 10 years after the events of X-Men: Days of Future Past, the new movie has the responsibility of continuing the brand new continuity, and establishes heroes who will be absolutely key to the series’ future. But where does the film leave them all individually when the credits roll? That’s what we’re here to break down.

Across the next few pages, we’ve singled out the various heroes of X-Men: Apocalypse, established where they are at the end of the fight with the titular villain, and speculate where we might see them all go in the next few years of the X-Men franchise. Read on, and hit the comments section on each page to tell us where you want to see all of the characters go in the future!

Professor X

James McAvoy’s Professor Charles Xavier sported a beautiful quaff of brown locks through most of his screen time in X-Men: First Class, X-Men: Days of Future Past, and X-Men: Apocalypse, but those times are over. Thanks to the kidnapping plot orchestrated by the titular villain in the most recent film, and his attempts to transfer his consciousness into Xavier’s body, the professor is now just as hairless as both his comic book counterpart and Patrick Stewart’s iteration of the character

Professor X went through a hell of a lot through the events of X-Men: Apocalypse, but being one of the most resilient people on the planet, he will stop at nothing to help and protect mutants and teach them to live in peace with the rest of humanity. With key individuals (who we will discuss soon) now under his tutelage and the Xavier School For Gifted Youngsters rebuilt, he’s ready to ascend to his most iconic role as the leader and mentor of the X-Men – cue-ball head and all.

Mystique

We’ve seen the post-Days of Future Past timeline affect the trajectory of numerous heroes and villains, but none have been more changed than Jennifer Lawrence’s Mystique. While she served as a mostly-mute villainous agent for Magneto in the original X-Men trilogy, the more recent three movies have seen her actually become a key and founding member of Professor X’s team. From what we see at the end of X-Men: Apocalypse, it doesn’t seem like her run as a hero is ending any time soon.

Mystique’s involvement in the events of X-Men: Days of Future Past have made her an icon for mutants around the world (including the young Storm), and after X-Men: Apocalypse it seems like she is finally ready to fully embrace that role. While Professor X is certainly still the leader of the X-Men, Mystique is the one positioned as the one giving shots on the ground during battle. Whether she’ll still be in this same station in the next X-Men movie – set approximately 10 years later – is unclear, as she may find herself handing the reins off to one of the younger members of the squad.

Magneto

Life has never been too kind to Erik Lehnsherr a.k.a. Magneto (Michael Fassbender), from his childhood in Auschwitz, to witnessing the death of his wife and daughter because of an errant arrow. As a result, it’s not a stretch to understand why he wound up teaming with Apocalypse and just trying to end Planet Earth. By the end of X-Men: Apocalypse, however, he does understand that there are reasons to live on in this world, and winds up assisting Professor X’s team in the destruction of En Sabah Nur.

In the final scene of the film, Magneto continues to help the X-Men, working alongside Jean Grey to rebuild Xavier’s School For Gifted Youngsters, but part of the work doesn’t involve building a room for himself. Instead, he turns down Xavier’s offer to stay on as a teacher, once again venturing out in the world to start a new life for himself. Understanding how this franchise operates, we can probably expect him to pop his head out sometime in the early ‘90s, just as the events of the next X-Men adventure begins to unfold.

Beast

In the X-Men movie franchise, you won’t find a character more loyal than Nicholas Hoult’s Hank McCoy a.k.a. Beast. After meeting Charles Xavier in the early 1960s, McCoy understood that the would-be professor was a man that he would follow to the gates of hell – and he has. Not only does he find himself regularly fighting by his friend’s side on the battlefield, but he also entirely believes in the mission of Xavier’s School For Gifted Youngers, and has spent years helping mutants (like the young Cyclops) hone and understand their abilities.

In the wake of what happened in X-Men: Apocalypse that won’t change. Not only will Beast continue to serve as a teacher in Professor X’s school, but he will also fight alongside Mystique and the other young X-Men who are now assembled into a squad learning to work as a team – occasionally providing the group with the technology, weaponry and transportation needed to accomplish the various missions that lie ahead.

Cyclops

Thanks to Wolverine’s emphasized presence in the original X-Men trilogy, we never really got to see Cyclops’ full potential on the big screen – but that could change very soon. With actor Tye Sheridan taking over the role from James Marsden in X-Men: Apocalypse, and Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine exiting stage left after Wolverine 3, we expect the future to be filled with Cyclops-heavy stories that paint him as more than an annoying jerk who gets in the way of the romance between Logan and Jean Grey.

Remember what I was saying earlier about Mystique eventually passing the torch and eventually choosing a new leader for the X-Men? Well, that choice should be Cyclops – though he’s not quite there at the end of X-Men: Apocalypse. While he does get the more comic book-inspired duds that you see above, he is still a nascent in the world of fighting for peace and mutant equality, and has quite a bit to learn from Professor X, Mystique and Beast. That being said, by the time we catch up with him in the 1990s, we expect him to become much more of a leader.

Jean Grey

In the end battle between the X-Men and Apocalypse, Sophie Turner’s Jean Grey unleashes a taste of her power’s full potential – giving us all a quick preview of her connection to the Phoenix Force – but the truth is that she has a long way to go. It’s true that she has been a student of Xavier’s longer than most of her teammates, but her mutation is still far from stable, as evidenced by the fact that she still tends to shake the mansion when she dreams.

On beyond her Phoenix-related future, X-Men: Apocalypse seeds a lot of interesting things for Jean Grey, from her tight bond with Professor X, to her romantic entanglements with Cyclops. These relationships will surely all progress greatly in the timeline gap between the new film and the next sequel, and eventually we do expect them to try and take another crack at the Dark Phoenix Saga.

Storm

Comic book fans know Storm as one of the most important and heroic members of the X-Men, but X-Men: Apocalypse establishes her as having a bit of a villain streak in her origin story. Played by Alexandra Shipp, her first real interaction with the members of Xavier’s school is facing off against them on the battlefield, having been manipulated by Apocalypse to become one of his Four Horsemen. By the end of the movie, however, the presence of her idol, Mystique, helps her recognize the error of her ways, and she becomes a powerful warrior for the side of good.

Professor Xavier was obviously willing to accept Storm into his school with open arms, and presumably the other members of the X-Men are going to be able to get over the fact that she once tried to kill them. It’s true that fact may cause a bit of tension in the early days, but we expect that by the time we catch up with the characters in the 1990s all will be forgiven and they will be functioning as a group like a well-oiled machine.

Nightcrawler

Movie fans fell in love with Nightcrawler thanks to Alan Cumming’s performance in X2: X-Men United, but sadly the character completely disappeared from the franchise after that point. Thankfully, Kodi Smit-McPhee has brought the blue teleporting mutant back into the fold in X-Men: Apocalypse, and based on what we saw at the end of the film, it seems that he will be a character who is around for a long time.

Unlike the original franchise timeline, Nightcrawler will now go down in history as part of the classic X-Men team that also united legendary heroes like Cyclops, Jean Grey, and Storm. Being a part of the group will certainly improve the status of his life, as he goes from being locked in boxes and thrown in cage matches to being a student in Upstate New York who lives in a mansion. Due to the opening scene of X-Men: Apocalypse, we are wondering if the future may reveal a deeper connection between the young Kurt Wagner and Mystique, as she is actually his mother in the comics, but that may be a detail the movie franchise just skips over (again).

Quicksilver

Evan Peters’ Quicksilver became a fan favorite character after his fun performance in X-Men: Days of Future Past, but his part was also a bit controversial given that he was kept out of the action at the end of the film when he would have been quite useful. Fortunately, Bryan Singer and Simon Kinberg learned from his mistake, and it seems that after X-Men: Apocalypse, he isn’t going anywhere.

Quicksilver has an exciting future ahead of him, not only being one of the core members of the X-Men, but also because of the identity of his father. While X-Men: Apocalypse does confirm that Magneto is his dad, the speedy mutant fails to actually share this information – even when it meant potentially giving the master of magnetism something to live for and a change of heart. Presumably it will take another 10 years in the timeline for Quicksilver and Magneto to talk about their connection, but we look forward to seeing how that interaction goes down.

Psylocke

It’s true that Olivia Munn’s Psylocke doesn’t exactly become a "hero" by the end of X-Men: Apocalypse, but given the character’s anti-hero history in the comics, we figured we’d include her on this list. By the end of the movie, she certainly finds herself escaping Apocalypse’s sway, escaping while the First Mutant is being destroyed, but she also doesn’t exactly seem to be a big fan of the X-Men either.

Psylocke is definitely one of the more under-developed characters in X-Men: Apocalypse - having only been written into the script shortly before production started – and there’s definitely plenty of potential avenues to take her in for the future. For example, she was notably a member of the Uncanny X-Force alongside Deadpool, so with some time travel action we could possibly see that adapted for the big screen. Of course, she’s been a member of the X-Men as well, and it’s entirely possible that she could find herself aligning with the team when a new threat rises in the ‘90s.

For the bulk of X-Men: Apocalypse, the team felt like they were running in place. We’ve seen a handful of X-Men movies that have required Professor Charles Xavier (be it the Patrick Stewart version, or the James McAvoy version) to assemble his team of super-powered mutants so they could fend off… well, usually Magneto. He’s always a problem. But the X-Men are in desperate need of a leader, and they seem to have found one in this most recent film. Now it’s time for Cyclops to stand up and be the leader for which the X-Men franchise has been begging.

This article is going to dive into spoilers for X-Men: Apocalypse, so stop reading now if you haven’t yet seen the film.

Scott Summers, aka Cyclops, was an original member of the X-Men team introduced in the pages of Marvel’s comics in 1963. Fighting alongside Angel, Beast, Iceman and Jean Grey, Cyclops helped establish the mutant version of The Avengers, and blazed a trail that would lead to the nine X-Men movies that we’ve enjoyed to this point. But Cyclops has never been able to break free of a supporting role in the X-Men movies, which have dedicated their respective spotlights to opposing characters like Wolverine (the fan favorite played by Hugh Jackman) in the original X-Men trilogy, and the trifecta of Charles, Erik, and Raven (of all people) in the First Class trilogy.

Which is understandable. Let’s deal with the original X-Men trilogy. Bryan Singer set up a bit of an odd-couple love triangle in that film, pitting Jackman against a well-cast James Marsden for the attentions of Famke Janssen’s Jean Grey. But Jackman proved so popular, Marsden’s Cyclops was all but relegated to cameo status in X2 and X-Men: The Last Stand (even though he should have been integral to the telling of the Dark Phoenix saga in Brett Ratner’s first and only X-Men story).

Looking to shake things up in X-Men: First Class, director Matthew Vaughn opted to populate his initial team of mutants with powerful characters we hadn’t yet seen on screen – for any proper amount of time. Sure, you needed to have Charles (McAvoy), Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence). But their first class, pun intended, included such mutants as Azazel (Jason Flemyng), Havok (Lucas Till), Banshee (Caleb Landry Jones) and Angel Salvadore (Zoe Kravitz). The team continued to fluctuate through Days of Future Past, which once again leaned on Wolverine and his A-list First Class co-stars, but X-Men: Apocalypse took a big step toward righting the X-Ship and placing the pivotal character of Cyclops back where he belongs… as the natural team leader, and possibly a focal point of the franchise moving forward.

Which character stands as the central anchor of X-Men: Apocalypse? Is it Raven? Not really. She spends most of the movie telling the new mutants that she isn’t the hero they think that she is. Is it Erik? No. Once he’s recruited to be a Horseman, the tragedy of this early arc fades away in the chaos which accompanies the usual popcorn blockbuster noise. What about Charles? He’s a victim of the plot, kidnapped and kept at bay by Apocalypse for the duration of the story. While a new team of mutants is introduced, and we finally get another version of Cyclops, both he and Jean are still figuring out how to use their powers in battle. It’s another origin story for the team’s natural leader. But it might be his turn.

I’m very excited by the team that has been assembled in the closing minutes of X-Men: Apocalypse. With a bald Xavier overlooking his Danger Room, Mystique trains Cyclops, Jean, Quicksilver, Storm and Nightcrawler. Both Cyclops and Storm have spent time in the leadership role of the X-Men, as a team, and I think either would be outstanding choices to be the focal point of a series of films involving this team. There are countless stories left to be told in the X-Men universe, and they DON’T have to all be tied to Magneto.

But because of his history with the team, and the complicated nature of Scott Summers’ personality, I think it would be great for the X-Men movies to make Cyclops the leader of the team moving forward, giving the movies a focused anchor on which to rely. Don’t make him Wolverine’s punching bag, or a throwaway effect in an Origins story that goes nowhere. Allow Cyclops, as played by Tye Sheridan, to lead. Allow him to fail. Allow him to fall in love with Jean (Sophie Turner), so that the Dark Phoenix storyline – whenever it happens – means more to us, as an audience. If any classic X-Men hero has been shortchanged the most over the course of nine X-Men movies, it’s Cyclops. And I think it’s time for Fox and the X-Men producers to change that.    

The role of Cyclops was originated on the big screen by James Marsden, but for X-Men: Apocalypse, which is set in 1983, he’s being succeeded by future Ready Player One star Tye Sheridan. It’s been a long time since Scott Summers played a major role in the X-Men movies, but for the latest entry, we’ll see him coming to Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters for the first time and learning to control his powerful optic blasts. Beyond X-Men: Apocalypse, we haven’t heard anything about when Sheridan’s Cyclops will appear again, but the actor expects that he’ll return for a couple more adventures.

Although multi-picture deals are common nowadays when joining a superhero franchise, Tye Sheridan confirmed in an interview with EW that he’s signed on for two more X-Men movies. Which movies these will be weren’t revealed, and it’s possible the studio doesn’t even know yet when they’ll use him again. Sheridan’s Cyclops is one of the many younger versions of the main X-Men that’s being introduced in X-Men: Apocalypse, so if he’ll be back at some point, we can expect the others younger X-Men (like Sophie Turner’s Jean Grey) will also return at some point.

Director Bryan Singer has called X-Men: Apocalypse as a kind of "conclusion" to the six main X-Men movies, but he’s also described it as the "true birth of the X-Men." Following the events of X-Men: Days of Future Past, the franchise now exists in a new timeline, meaning that although it’s filled with familiar characters, events won’t play out exactly like they did in the original movies. So if Tye Sheridan returns, moviegoers should look forward to his Cyclops continuing his studies under Professor X while fighting bad guys set to do harm to both mutants and humans, just like in the original stories.

As for when he might return, that’s a mystery. There hasn’t been any word on if/when there will be more main X-Men movies after X-Men: Apocalypse. The franchise’s future, for now, rest solely on spinoffs like Wolverine 3 and Deadpool 2. Singer has said he wants to direct another main X-Men movie, but he’s taking a break from the world mutants to direct 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea next. If Tye Sheridan returns for a main entry, that means that despite the "First Class" trilogy concluding, the movies could continue to be set in the past, around the mid-late 80s, depending on how much time has passed since the battle with Apocalypse. On the other hand, there have been 10-11 year jumps in the franchise since X-Men: First Class, so maybe Sheridan and his fellow younger X-Men can get away looking the same in the ‘90s, which wouldn’t be too far off from when X-Men took place.

We’ll see Tye Sheridan’s Cyclops in action when X-Men: Apocalypse is released on May 27.

When the X-Men film series found new life by turning back the clock and introducing Professor Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr as young men, it also introduced an entirely new group of mutants, giving us some separation from the characters we had spent three films working with. However, when X-Men: Apocalypse hits the screen next month, we’ll have caught up in the timeline somewhat as we will finally meet the younger versions of classic characters like Jean Grey and Cyclops. The young Scott Summers is very excited to have this opportunity, and he hopes he’s up for the challenge.

When Cyclops takes the screen this summer it will not be in the guise of James Marsden, but instead young Tye Sheridan with ownership over the role. The actor tells Den of Geek that he’s truly honored to be playing the part, at what will literally be the beginning of the character’s life, as when we meet Scott Summers in X-Men: Apocalypse, his powers have not yet manifested.

Whatever happens to X-Men movie universe, most fans will always have a special memory of the original team from the first trilogy of X-Men movies. While James Marsden probably played Cyclops as a bit more of a stick in the mud than his comic counterpart ever really was, it was, without question, a memorable role. We have a hard time seeing the character on screen any other way.

Tye Sheridan certainly has his work cut out for him when it comes to making the role his own. If he’s got one thing going for him, it’s the fact that he’ll be able to start the character from the beginning. If we’re actually going to see Scott Summers’ powers from their beginning in X-men: Apocalypse, and watch as he comes to terms with them, and both their abilities and limitations. He has the ability to really show us how the character came to be the eventual leader of the X-Men, and possibly be a little less of a stick in the mud in this new, rebooted timeline.

What do you think of the new, young, Cyclops in the trailers? Are you excited to see a new take on the character from Tye Sheridan, or would you rather see James Marsden again? Let us know in the comments.

While we’re still a couple of years away from the Steven Spielberg directed adaptation of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, pre-production is beginning to get underway. Fans are looking forward to seeing the fully realized virtual world of the OASIS created on the big screen. However, according to the film’s star, we may not be seeing nearly as much of it as we thought. Tye Sheridan says only about a third of the script takes place there.

Ready Player One tells the story of Wade Watts, an American high school student who lives most of his life inside the virtual reality simulation called the OASIS under the name Parzival. Tye Sheridan will be playing the role when the movie is released in 2018. Recently Variety asked the actor if he was familiar with source material. While Sheridan is currently ready the book now, he’s already the screenplay, and his most interesting comment was how much of the film takes place inside virtual reality.

For those who have read the book, that’s going to seem a little low. While there’s a solid of chunk in the latter half of the book that takes place outside of the OASIS, we get brief scenes at most outside of the game prior to that. One of the key aspects of the book is that the future that the story takes place in is a pretty terrible world. The great recession never ended and the world is pretty much out of oil which has led to a major energy crisis. Real life sucks. This is why Wade Watts, along with many other people in the world, retreat into virtual reality. Things are less shitty there.

If the amount of time the movie will spend in the OASIS will be reduced as compared to the novel, it’s likely primarily due to cost concerns. Tye Sheridan says that he thinks Ready Player One could be a "milestone for cinema" in regards to the way that it handles virtual reality. If the movie is looking to push the envelope, that likely means their plans will be expensive. While we would expect the Ready Player One movie will have a blockbuster level budget, there still may be limits to what they can do.

At the same time, it’s hard to figure out what they would change to reduce the amount of time the characters spend inside the game. The entire plot is based around a puzzle that must be solved inside the OASIS. There’s essentially no way the main plot can advance anyplace else. It could very well mean that scenes that are not directly related to that plot may be cut however. No zero gravity dance club? Say it ain’t so!

What do you think of a Ready Player One that contains two-thirds of its content in the real world? Can the essence of the story still be there, or is the heart of the film in the virtual world?

Though it has taken its sweet time getting here, an adaptation of Ernest Cline’s geeky, pop culture drenched novel Ready Player One is finally rolling. Helmed by the one, the only, Steven Spielberg, it has been putting together a fantastic cast, minus one key piece: hero Wade Watts. That key part of the equation was missing, until now, and it appears that Spielberg and company have found an ideal fit for the lead.

With eye-catching roles in indie films like Mud, Joe, and The Stanford Prison Experiment, and the fact that he plays Scott Summers/Cyclops in the upcoming X-Men: Apocalypse, Tye Sheridan has had a meteoric rise as of late. And now Deadline reports that the 19-year-old actor has landed the lead role in Ready Player One and will play Wade Watts.

As you probably inferred if you’re not familiar with the novel, Wade Watts is the protagonist of Ready Player One. He’s a poor kid who lives in a literal stack of mobile homes in a dystopian near future. In this particular iteration of the what lies ahead for humanity, most of the population jacks in daily to a virtual reality world called Oasis, where they do everything from work and go to school to hang out with friends in digital basement crash pads to escape the crushing depression of their reality.

The creator of Oasis died without leaving any heirs, but he did assemble an elaborate, in-world puzzle, a kind of sprawling scavenger hunt, and whoever solves the pop culture infused riddle wins Oasis and instantly becomes the richest, most powerful person on the planet. Wade is one of the people hunting through the virtual realm for clues.

Tye Sheridan joins a cast that already includes fellow up-and-comer Olivia Cooke (Ouija, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl), who plays Ar3mis, Wade’s competitor, friend, ally, and love interest by turns. Ben Mendelsohn, who will show up later this year in Star Wars: Rogue One, has also been cast to play the villain, reportedly an executive for an internet company who is also on the case and vying for control of Oasis, for obvious reasons.

First published in 2011, Ernest Cline’s novel, which already had a movie deal in place before it hit bookshelves, became a huge cult hit. It will be super interesting to see what Ready Player One looks like when it finally hits the big screen. For one, most of the action is set in a virtual reality world where the characters control avatars, which sounds tricky to adapt. Secondly, damn near every sentence references some pop culture artifact that plays a key role, and as such, there are hundreds if not thousands of rights that will need to be cleared. That could be a pain in the ass to work around, not to mention expensive. Steven Spielberg has already said that they’re removing any references to his own work.

Ready Player One recently moved its release date so it won’t go up against Star Wars: Episode VIII at the box office, which his probably a smart choice. It will now hit theaters on March 30, 2018.

Jennifer Aniston has remained the most successfully employed of the Friends actors outside of television. The actress has mainly stuck to her comedy roots, but has also slowly been creeping into more dramatic territory as of late, and she just signed on to add another serious film to her resume. The actress will star in The Yellow Birds with Jack Huston. The movie is due out sometime next year, and will arrive with a fantastic cast.

The casting story broke on The Wrap. The Yellow Birds follows two young soldiers who meet and befriend each other in boot camp, and promise to look out for one another. But, as they get deeper and deeper into the Iraq war, their promise becomes harder to keep. The movie is based on the novel of the same name by Kevin Powers, an Iraq war veteran who served in that country in 2004 and 2005. In addition to Aniston and Huston the film will also star Mud's Tye Sheridan, and Alden Ehrenreich of Beautiful Creatures

The novel was released in 2012 to critical acclaim, winning five major literary awards, including The Guardian First Book Award and The PEN/Hemingway Award. The book was also a finalist for the National Book Award, and lauded by The New York Times as one of the 100 Most Notable Books of 2012. Kevin Powers helped adapt his book for the film.

Jack Huston has received notice of late for suddenly dropping out of The Crow reboot during pre-production in Wales because of a scheduling issue, leaving the production with a last minute scramble for a new star. The Boardwalk Empire actor has also had roles in Kill Your Darlings, as Jack Kerouac, and recently completed the Mr. Wickham role in the upcoming film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

Jennifer Aniston has several movies on her plate in the next year. Along with The Yellow Birds, the actress is signed on for The Comedian, Mean Moms, and is currently filming Mother’s Day with Julia Roberts, Kate Hudson, and a huge cast of other recognizable faces. 

Aniston has done a mighty good job with her post-Friends career choices. Even though her movies, comedy or not, may not make a huge impact at the box office or critically, they have kept her in the minds of audiences and Hollywood decision makers enough for her to stay steadily employed. What’s interesting is that, for someone who was basically the girl on Friends she’s done a bang up job of becoming a reliable comedy star. I mean, let’s face it. Who made you laugh more on Friends, Rachel, Monica or Phoebe? If you think about it, that order is probably backwards.

I’m always glad when TV sitcom actors decide to ply their trade in something other than straight up comedy, though. Everyone has sides of themselves that need to be explored, and it stands to reason that someone known mostly for helping people laugh would want to see if audiences will accept them laying their bleeding heart out and putting it all on the line for a serious movie of epic proportions. Jennifer Aniston is probably on the right track, because you really can’t get more serious than a war drama.

Over the years, we’ve seen zombies taken out by many different kinds of individuals. It has been a job taken on by reporters, nurses, slackers, U.N. representatives, clerks, soldiers, and many, many more. This fall, however, movie-goers will be able to watch big screen zombie hunters of a much different breed, as Tye Sheridan, Logan Miller and Joey Morgan are about to become cinema’s first boy scout killers of the undead.

Last summer, I joined a small group of other film journalists on a trip to a closed off hotel in Los Angeles to visit the set of director Christopher Landon’s Scouts Guide To The Zombie Apocalypse - getting not only the opportunity to actually watch the movie being filmed, but also talk with the actors and filmmakers responsible for making it. I learned a lot of great stuff while there, so read on for a very special behind-the-scenes preview!

There’s A Big Secret Party That Goes All Kinds Of Wrong

Before all of the undead madness begins in Scouts Guide To The Zombie Apocalypse, and the characters are forced to try and save their town, the main mission of Ben (Tye Sheridan), Carter (Logan Miller) and Augie (Joey Morgan) is to try and get to a super-secret high school party that happens to be going down inside a Day-Glo painted, drained indoor pool. As you might imagine, this is actually a pretty sweet spot to hold a get-together, but it actually has a whole lot of downsides during a zombie apocalypse.

A zombie invasion of the "pool party" was what I got to watch unfold during my time on the set of the upcoming film, and it was while talking with director Christopher Landon that I realized the impressive and creative danger of the whole situation. After all, it’s not that big of a deal to escape a flesh-eater when in a big open room, but things become very troublesome when monsters corner you in the deep end. Said Landon,

If/when the zombie apocalypse does break out, you’re probably going to want to keep this in mind.

There Is A Key Advantage To Being A Scout During The Zombie Apocalypse

When putting together a team to try and survive a zombie apocalypse, key people to consider are soldiers (for knowing how to kill things) and farmers (to solve long-term food problems), but you may not want to count out scouts. After all, their motto is to be prepared, and while being prepared for an undead uprising is tricky, you can trust that they know what they’re doing. As Scouts Guide To The Zombie Apocalypse co-star Joey Morgan explained,

In the movie, there are some extra special circumstances that pop up as well, however, and beyond axes and knots, there are even some important skills that the titular scouts pick up that actually wind up being very important. For example, Tye Sheridan’s Ben has a gardening badge, and not only is a trowel-in-the-head a great way to kill a zombie, but it also gives the character access to a very special tool. Said Sheridan, during our on-set interview,

Sounds tremendous!

The Movie Started As PG-13, But That Has Changed In A Big Way

When Scouts Guide To The Zombie Apocalypse was making its way through production, the idea wasn’t really to make the movie for adults, but instead more for kids – planned with a far less hardcore PG-13 rating. This originally meant no blood, no cursing and no nudity… but that wound up going out the door when Christopher Landon came aboard to helm.

While we were on set, the filmmaker didn’t make it sound like he had to bust down doors or break heads in order to make an R-rating happen for the film – but he did add that the more adult-oriented stuff doesn’t just come in the form of bashed zombie brains. Instead, you’ll find that the entire thing really pushes boundaries. Said Landon,

You have to do something to compete with the insanity that goes on weekly on The Walking Dead, right?

There Is Something Special About These Zombies…

Zombies have been a big part of the cinematic landscape for decades and decades, but while many of the incarnations share certain traits, filmmakers also regularly do what they can to put their own spin on the horrific hordes – be it George A. Romero taking their intelligence up a notch for Land of the Dead, or Danny Boyle putting a serious motor on their ass in 28 Days Later. Scouts Guide To The Zombie Apocalypse is no different in that category, as director Christopher Landon and the film’s screenwriters also took an extra step in making zombies special: namely the fact that the undead remember elements of who they used to be.

During our interview, Landon not only acknowledged examples, but stressed that it’s one of the elements that makes the film more of a horror comedy than a straight-up horror story. For instance, there is a sequence in the movie where the film’s heroes finally get into a strip club after being constantly denied – but wind up discovering that the girl spinning around the pole has already been infected.

Admittedly, this is an idea that Edgar Wright previously experimented with while making his own great rom-zom-com, Shaun of the Dead, but hopefully < em>Scouts Guide To The Zombie Apocalypse will take this idea further and do great things with it.

Zombie Animals Are A Thing

There’s a long list of reasons why human zombies are absolutely terrifying. They’re big, so they can block a path; they have long arms and jointed fingers, allowing for better reaching and grabbing; and, of course, there’s the possibility that you might have had an emotional connection with the person before they became undead, making them difficult to blow away. Dangerous as all that makes them, however, human aren’t the only threats that the heroes need to face down in Scouts Guide To The Zombie Apocalypse. Instead, there’s also a good bunch of zombie animals. Said director Christopher Landon,

It makes sense that a zombie plague might not only affect the humans of Earth, and would get to the larger animal kingdom as well – so it’s great that the new film is changing the rules a bit to make them into an impressive and killer threat. We’ll see if Tye Sheridan, Logan Miller, Joey Morgan, and the rest of the cast can survive when Scouts Guide To The Zombie Apocalypse arrives in theaters October 30th.

One of the tenants of being a Boy Scout is to always be prepared, and that mantra is going to come in especially handy in the midst of a zombie infestation, as there will be a lot of mayhem to contend with. And that’s just what a bunch of outcast scouts—you have to assume the Boy Scouts of America didn’t sign off on this, so they appear to some kind of knock off scouts—have to deal with in this new trailer for Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse. Check it out below.

This trailer has just about everything you want and expect from a movie called Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse. There are indeed both scouts and a zombie apocalypse, but there’s so much more, too. You’ve got a zombie stripper, a whole horde of zombie cats, a strip club cocktail waitress who’s handy with a shotgun, lots of exploding heads, and, for some reason, a trampoline. I don’t know, but I’m sure we’ll find out when we watch the movie. And there are zombie boobs, if that’s something you’re into.

Starring Tye Sheridan (X-Men: Apocalypse), Patrick "Son of Arnold" Schwarzenegger, Logan Miller (The Stanford Prison Experiment), Halston Sage (Neighbors), and living legend Cloris Leachman, this looks campy and gory and just over the top enough that it could very well be a great deal of fun. Some of the humor, admittedly, looks a bit too easy, but that’s to be expected when you put a bunch of nerds in neckerchiefs with hot, zombie-fighting strippers. But the three lifelong scout friends will have to put all their skills to good use to survive this, and I’m just saying, but they better get one hell of an awesome merit badge if they make it through.

Directed by Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones helmer Christopher Landon (who also wrote PA 2, 3, and 4), Scouts Guide, along with the upcoming Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension oddly enough, is part of an experiment that could possibly change the way movies are released. For these two movies, Paramount, AMC, and a number of other theater chains have come to an agreement that will allow newer movies to hit the VOC market a little as 17 days after they end their theatrical run, instead of waiting months.

Especially for smaller movies with a more limited theatrical run—The Ghost Dimension, for example, is only going to open in 300 theaters—this move could be huge. It will allow audiences in places where the movie isn’t playing to see it sooner, while at the same time giving movies the opportunity to capitalize on any momentum or word of mouth they might generate that could dissipate over the standard three or four-month waiting period. We’ll have to wait and see if it takes off, and some theaters, most notably Regal, have remained resistant, but it’s an interesting idea.

Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse opens on October 30.

Thanks to Entertainment Weekly’s latest issue, we got our first in-depth look at X-Men: Apocalypse and all the newer, younger mutants that come with it. While this film will act as a conclusion to the previous two installments, it will also see an origin for some the more famous characters of the X-Men universe. Tye Sheridan, the young actor who plays Cyclops, recently spoke about this version of Scott Summers and where we’ll first find him.

During an interview with Indiewire about Sheridan’s latest film, The Stanford Prison Experiment, he explained,

It’s a different Cyclops than James Marsden’s iteration in X-Men, X2 and The Last Stand. That man was a leader who felt responsible for his team, which is the opposite of where we pick up with him in Apocalypse. In the EW issue, we also discovered that he’s a bad boy, so expect some shenanigans to come. Then there’s also Havok to consider. This is the first time we’re seeing Cyclop’s brother, played by Lucas Till, in a film with his laser-eyed sibling, a dynamic that’ll be interesting to see play out.

Sheridan, who made a name for himself in the indie circuit, hasn’t been featured in this capacity in a blockbuster, and his fellow generation of mutants is in a similar boat. Sophie Turner became famous for playing Sansa Stark on Game of Thrones, but Jean Grey is her first foray with a major franchise. Then there’s newcomer Lana Condor as Jubilee, Ben Hardy as Angel, and Alexandra Shipp from Lifetime’s Aaliyah biopic playing Storm. The only real exception is our new Nightcrawler, Kodi Smit-McPhee, who was seen last year in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and, before that, in The Road.

Bryan Singer continues filming X-Men: Apocalypse, which is currently set for release on May 27, 2016. These younger stars are joined by vets Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy and Nicholas Hoult, as well as Olivia Munn, Oscar Isaac, Evan Peters, Rose Byrne and Josh Helman. It’s unclear who else might pop up (ahem, Hugh Jackman), but Patrick Stewart was also spotted on set alongside Singer. We were on the set in Montreal to check out all the action, so stay tuned for a full report.

Bryan Singer's X-Men: Days of Future Past wound up changing the entire X-Men timeline. Because of the way the movie ended, none of the events featured in previous films - with the exception of X-Men: First Class - actually technically happened, and as a result the characters from the original trilogy won't be the exact same people who that we spent years getting to know. This idea is very much reflected in new comments from X-Men: Apocalypse producer/co-writer Simon Kinberg, who has explained how we can expect to see young Storm, Cyclops and Jean Grey portrayed in the upcoming blockbuster.

Empire recently had the chance to interview the filmmaker about the soon-to-star-production X-Men: Apocalypse, and it was during this conversation that Kinberg revealed some very basic details about the aforementioned three characters - who will be played by franchise newcomers Alexandra Shipp, Tye Sheridan, and Sophie Turner, respectively. Let's take a closer look at them individually, shall we?

Storm

Right off the bat we'll start with the most interesting character description that Simon Kinberg offered. In the original X-Men trilogy and X-Men: Days of Future Past, Ororo Munroe a.k.a. Storm was always shown to be a force for good in the battle between Professor X's team and the Brotherhood of Mutants, but evidently X-Men: Apocalypse will be adding a bit of darkness into the character's history. Said the writer/producer of Shipp's take, "Storm is ?a troubled character who is going down the wrong path in life."

Cyclops

While seemingly not as extreme, it also seems that the new version of Scott Summers a.k.a. Cyclops will also have a bit of an edge to him. In his own words, Kinberg describes the Tye Sheridan's take as not yet being "the squeaky-clean leader." This could be a nice contrast to what we've previously seen from the James Marsden version of the character, who was ultimately pretty bland in the original X-Men titles, and not nearly as cool as his comic book counterpart.

Jean Grey

The portrayal of Jean Grey will be an interesting case in X-Men: Apocalypse if not just because we got to see a good chunk of her history in X-Men: The Last Stand - but, again, all of that stuff has now been written off. In his description, Simon Kinberg says this take on the character "is complex, interesting and not fully mature." Going further, he added, "It’s fun to see someone struggling with their powers when you know one day they’ll become the most powerful person in the world."

Storm, Cyclops and Jean Grey won't be the only young mutants featured in X-Men: Apocalypse, as they will be joined by Kodi Smit-McPhee's Nightcrawler, Lana Condor's Jubilee, and Ben Hardy's Angel, but it sounds like this main trio will be getting the bulk of the focus where new young castmembers are concerned. We'll see how it all turns out when X-Men: Apocalypse hits theaters on May 27, 2016.

Earlier today, 20th Century Fox unveiled the first official look at Kodi Smit-McPhee has the new version of Nightcrawler, but now he has been joined in the light by a few of the other new castmembers in Bryan Singer's X-Men: Apocalypse. This is because some new set photos from the film have leaked online, giving us our debut peek at Sophie Turner as Jean Grey, Tye Sheridan as Cyclops, and Lana Condor as Jubilee (as well as extra angles on the new Nightcrawler).

Click HERE to see a full, hi-res shot. Then check out the leaked set photos below!

These two images were posted online by Twitter user @FrancescaY, who evidently lives in the area where X-Men: Apocalypse is currently shooting (and as you may be able to tell from her caption, it seems that her mom was the one that snapped the photos). Obviously it's hard to glean any kind of plot information from the images, but they definitely do give us an interesting peek at what the movie is doing with the characters. For starters, it definitely looks like Nightcrawler is wearing Michael Jackson's red jacket from the "Thriller" video, but that's only the tip of the iceberg.

On the far right of the first photo is our first look at Tye Sheridan's young version of Cyclops - stepping in for James Marsden, who played the character in the original X-Men trilogy as well as X-Men: Days of Future Past. Certainly the most notable part of his costume here is his eyewear, which appears to be rather standard blue sunglasses rather than the character's classic visor. This makes sense given that it doesn't appear that he's heading into battle in this scene, but hopefully X-Men: Apocalypse will feature a sequence with the character in his most famous gear (maybe Nicholas Hoult's Beast can build it for him).

Next up, let's take a look at Jubilee - who actually looks like she's wearing a costume straight from the comics. After all, the first shot reveals that Lana Condor is sporting a pair of pink sunglasses on top of her head, and the second shot has her clearly wearing a yellow leather jacket. It's without question the outfit she is best known for wearing, and it looks like X-Men: Apocalypse is paying tribute to that.

Of the four actors featured in the shot, the reveal of Sophie Turner as Jean Grey is perhaps the least exciting - but that's not really anyone's fault. A large plant blocks our view of her costume in both shots - though it looks like she might be wearing some kind of blue pant suit. At least her red hair looks perfect.

Hopefully it won't be too much longer until we get official first looks at these X-Men: Apocalypse characters, but for now, what do you think?

Just a couple days ago the announcement was made. Tye Sheridan will be playing the young Cyclops in the upcoming X-Men: Apocalypse. So what does his Cyclops predecessor, James Marsden, have to say about the casting decision? Well, turns out Marsden is a huge fan of Sheridan, and along with sharing strong compliments and congratulations, Marsden affirms that the young actor is the perfect fit.

The original Scott Summers, James Marsden was in attendance at the Sundance Film Festival, when HitFlix asked him for his thoughts on the new casting. Elder Cyclops who has portrayed the character in numerous X-Men films had high praise for the young man and his previous performances:

Sheridan’s career is seriously impressive considering his youth. At age 18, the actor has already given some incredibly powerful performances in critically-acclaimed films such as Mud and The Tree of Life. And Marsden's genuine excitement comes after his hopeful successor was not chosen, too. A few months back, Marsden shared whom he would like to see play the role, and while he admitted he did not know much about what was going on behind the scenes, he did offer the name Luke Bracey, who may only be 25, but looks a whole lot older than the current casting.

Marsden’s suggestion was more out of adoration for Bracey’s performance in their collaborated film, The Best of Me where Bracey portrays a younger version of Marsden's character. But still, it seems like Marsden really has no idea how young the younger version of Cyclops was going to be in the newest X-Men flick.

Casting the young cyclops apparently hasn’t been easy, either, with many up-and-coming actors testing for the role. But, Tye Sheridan came out on top, and his young counterparts include Alexandra Shipp playing young Storm, and Game of Thrones star Sophie Turner as young Jean Grey. The actors will join a powerhouse cast already, that includes Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique, Michael Fassbender as Magneto, James McAvoy as Professor X, Nicholas Hoult as Beast, and Oscar Isaac as Apocalypse. Production is scheduled to begin in the next few months, and X-Men: Apocalypse is due to hit theaters on May 27, 2016.

We've known for months now that the upcoming X-Men: Apocalypse would be finding new, young actors to take over the roles of Cyclops, Storm, and Jean Grey - and while we've heard many names floated around as potential candidates, now we officially know who the three choices are: Tye Sheridan, Alexandra Shipp, and Sophie Turner.

Director Bryan Singer revealed the big casting announcement himself, taking to Twitter to make the very matter-of-fact reveal:

So who are these young actors? Let's take a closer look:

Tye Sheridan is only 18 years old, but has already managed to catch the eye of some very talented filmmakers. He made his big screen debut in Terrence Mallick's The Tree of Life, and earned a great deal of acclaim for his performance in the lead role opposite Matthew McConaughey in Jeff Nichols' indie coming of age drama Mud. He recently starred alongside fellow X-Men co-star Nicholas Hoult in the adaptation of Gillian Flynn's Dark Places, which should be coming out later this year. In The X-Men franchise, he will most notably be replacing James Marsden in the role of Cyclops, though it's also worth mentioning that a younger version of the character was played by Tim Pocock in Gavin Hood's X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

Of the three new actors joining the X-Men franchise, Alexandra Shipp is the one you might call the newcomer-ist of the newcomers. While she made her professional acting debut in 2009's Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, most of her work has been on television, doing shows like Days of Our Lives and Ray Donovan. She'll be the new version of Storm, whom Halle Berry famously first brought to live-action in Bryan Singer's 2000 X-Men film.

Those of you who are avid viewers of HBO's Game of Thrones are likely very aware of who Sophie Turner is, instantly acknowledging her as the young, bad-decision-making Sansa Stark. While she is the best known of the new bunch, however, she also has the shortest resume. X-Men: Apocalypse will easily be the biggest film she's been in so far, though she has completed her first action film production having played a supporting role in the upcoming comedy Barely Lethal with Jessica Alba and Samuel L. Jackson.

These three actors are joining an X-Men: Apocalypse cast that already includes the likes of Michael Fassbender as Magneto, James McAvoy as Professor X, Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique, Nicholas Hoult as Beast, and Oscar Isaac is the titular villain. Production is scheduled to begin in the next few months, so stay tuned for more updates!

We've been hearing talks about a Wargames remake going back all the way to 2011 when Horrible Bosses-helmer Seth Gordon was attached to make the movie, but now the film is finally ready to move forward again - albeit with a new writer and director. New reports say that Dean Israelite, the filmmaker behind the upcoming time travel thriller Project Almanac, and Arash Amel, the screenwriter behind the Aaron Eckhart thriller Erased and the upcoming Grace Kelly biopic Grace of Monaco, are now in talks with MGM to start working on the reboot of the 80s techno thriller.

The news about the guys taking care of things behind the scenes comes from Deadline, but The Wrap also has info on the actors who are being considered for the lead role, played by Matthew Broderick in the original:

Ansel Elgort

The first name on the list is Ansel Elgort, who you may also know as "That Guy Who Hangs Out With Shailene Woodley A Lot." This year he starred with the young actress in both The Fault In Our Stars and Divergent, and prior to that his first professional film role came in the 2013 remake of Carrie. He is currently working on the Divergent sequel, Insurgent, and also has a part in Jason Reitman's ensemble Men, Women & Children.

Tye Sheridan

Tye Sheridan seems to be Elgort's biggest competition for the part, but he is definitely a tough opponent. The young Texas-born actor made his acting debut in Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life (earning rave reviews), and followed that up with performances in Jeff Nichols' fantastic Mud and David Gordon Green's Joe. He is currently filming the horror comedy Scouts vs. Zombies, but has also completed work on the adaptaton of Gillian Flynn's Dark Places, writer/director Kyle Wilamowski's drama Grass Stains, Philip Martin's crime thriller The Forger, and Rodrigo Garcia's Last Days in the Desert.

The original Wargames told the story of a teen hacker who accidentally finds a backend into a defense department computer and accidentally puts the globe on the brink of World War III. Noah Oppenheim and Zak Penn wrote previous drafts of the remake, but it's unclear how much of their material will remain in the movie once Arash Amel has done his job. MGM seems keen on getting this movie made, so stay tuned for more updates.