I guess Bryan Singer got tired of tracking down his actors’ Twitter handles, because his latest cast reveal for X-Men:Days of Future Past comes in the form of a picture. And as you can see above, the picture tells us a story–there are three heretofore unknown cast members. HINT: They are the last three on the bottom row.
Thanks to Brendon Connelly and his Little Bleeders over at Bleeding Cool, we have put names with head shots. And those names are Daniel Cudmore, Booboo Stewart, and Bingbing Fan. And yes those last two are real actors and those are the names they really go by.
Daniel Cudmore should be no stranger to the fans of the X-Men films, as he played Colossus in X2: X-Men United and X-Men Last Stand. Since Colossus played such a pivotal part of the comic book storyline, it is only fitting that the character would be in this version of it. Of course, Cudmore’s Colossus has really played as big a part in the film franchise as he does in the comic books, so his inclusion doesn’t really tells if the film will follow the comic closely.
Cudmore has been spending his X-Men film downtime appearing in the Twilight franchise, playing Felix. Perhaps Bryan Singer asked Cudmore for advice on what new actors to bring into the franchise, because new addition Booboo Stewart also starred in the Twilight franchise as well, playing Seth.
Booboo Stewart is the son of stuntman/actor Nils Allen Stewart (and Booboo’s given name, according to IMDB, is Nils Allen Stewart Jr. ) and has appeared in guest parts in numerous TV shows and movies over the years. Like his father, he has also worked as a stuntman as early as the age of 10. And if his involvement in the Twilight Saga wasn’t enough to get the Comic Con Illuminati up in arms, he also spent some time as a Disney tween pop star, touring with Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers. Oh, and he also was a model. That’s quite a busy life and he’s not even twenty.
It is not know which X-Men character Booboo Stewart will be playing in the film, but our other new addition to the cast will be playing an iconic character from the books, according to Deadline.
Bingbing Fan is a Chinese actress who is quite famous in her native land, if she is rather unknown here in the States. Her films Double Xposure and Lost in Thailand, both released in 2012, broke box office records in China. She was also rumored to have been up for a role in Iron Man 3, but which role has not been confirmed.
What character will Fan play in Days of Future Past? She will play the mutant teleporter, Blink.
Blink debuted in comics in 1994 as part of the Phalanx Coveneant storyline and made only a few appearances before she was killed off. She proved popular enough that she was resurrected a year later as part of the alternate reality storyline, Age of Apocalypse, which occurred when a villain went back in time and killed Professor Xavier, allowing the villain Apocalypse to conquer the world. While that alternate reality didn’t last long, the character found life in the various volumes of Exiles, a superhero team consisting of heroes for various alternate universes banded together to keep all realities safe.
The inclusion of Blink’s character, and her connection to Apocalypse, might lend credence to the rumor that Apocalypse would be the bad guy of the film. And if you wish to extrapolate further, you could run with the theory that Days of Future Past will be a combination of the film’s namesake storyline and the Age of Apocalypse storyline, that it will be Xavier’, not a Senator’s or JFK’s, assassination that will bring on the dystopian future the time traveler is trying to avoid, and that the dystopian future in question will resemble the Age of Apocalypse.
Or, the script could simply call for a teleporter, and since Alan Cumming would be too busy to reprise his role as Nightcrawler, they picked another teleporter from the comic book canon to take his place. Could be that too.
Either way, we’ll find out more as the films 2014 release date approaches.
