Originally published April 30, 2017. Updated November 14, 2019.
Over the past three instalments of the main X-Men franchise we’ve seen several of the original X-Men recast with younger actors, including Professor Xavier, Beast, Jean Grey, Cyclops, Storm, Nightcrawler and Jubilee. And it looks like we may be able to add another to that list with 2018’s X-Men: Dark Phoenix.
The folks at Omega Underground have uncovered some audition tapes for the next move in the main series, which see young actors Rarmian Newton (The Family), Alexa Swinton (Billions) and newcomer Paul Mescal reading for roles. In the case of Swinton, the character name is ‘Marie’, prompting speculation that Fox could be looking to recast the role of Marie D’Ancanto, a.k.a. Rogue, who has been portrayed by Anna Paquin in the franchise so far.
Given that many of the major X-Men characters have already been recast, it wouldn’t be a surprise if this proves to be true. However, it’s slightly odd that the other the audition tapes use character code names – ‘Shane’ and ‘Sam’ – so it is of course entirely possibly that ‘Marie’ is also a placeholder name specifically for the audition process.
One thing it does seem we can take away from this however is that we’ll be seeing a few new mutants on the team when the X-Men reunite for Fox’s second stab at adapting The Dark Phoenix Saga.
X-Men: Dark Phoenix is set to go into production in June ahead of its recently-announced release on November 2nd 2018. As yet, there’s no word on a director, although regular X-Men writer-producer Simon Kinberg is thought to be under consideration.
