'Days of Future Past' Cast to Include Paquin, Page, and Ashmore

Unlike many, I didn’t find myself falling head over heels for X-Men: First Class; it’s decent, but I can’t praise a movie wholesale for being a few rungs higher on the ladder than X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Taking my sustained indifference toward the series into account, I may be utterly the wrong person to report on any news coming from the set of the latest picture in the X-franchise, X-Men: Days of Future Past.

Except that Bryan Singer has piqued my interest in the project courtesy of his Twitter-originating casting announcement this past Saturday. It’s already been revealed that the film will see Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart reprise their roles as Magneto and Charles Xavier alongside Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy– their respective younger counterparts– and that Hugh Jackman will take the stage as Wolverine once again (and that production will start up relatively soon, so as to give Jennifer Lawrence time to wrap up on the next Hunger Games movie). But Singer now has Anna Paquin, Ellen Page, and Shawn Ashmore on board to play Rogue, Shadowcat, and Iceman once more.

What does this tell us about Days of Future Past? Nothing that we couldn’t glean from a synopsis of the comic it’s based on (produced below), perhaps, but there’s something inherently exciting about getting the gang back together, especially for a story this big. If Singer sticks to the source and flips back and forth between alternating timelines– and if he keeps Sentinels in the film, which I think may be a bigger selling point for fans than the casting– then Days of Future Past could be something really special.

There’s no release on this puppy yet, but we’re expecting it to land sometime in 2014. (Correction, thanks to alert reader Warren: the release date is July 18th, 2014.) What do you think?

The storyline alternates between present day, in which the X-Men fight Mystique’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, and a future timeline caused by the X-Men’s failure to prevent the Brotherhood from assassinating Senator Robert Kelly. In this future universe, Sentinels rule the United States, and mutants live in internment camps. The present-day X-Men are forewarned of the possible future by a future version of their teammate Kitty Pryde, whose mind traveled back in time and possessed her younger self to warn the X-Men. She succeeds in her mission and returns to the future, but despite her success, the future timeline still exists as an alternative timeline rather than as the actual future.

(Source: First Showing)