Director Bryan Singer may have just given X-Men fans a sneak peek of the new look for Beast in X-Men: Days of Future Past.  The story of the film will include not only the characters seen in Matthew Vaughn’s successful X-Men: First Class, but will also incorporate a huge cast of characters from Singer’s original X-Men trilogy.  While the exact details of the film have been under wraps for the most part, the plot from the mythology involves Kitty Pryde/Shadowcat traveling back in time to warn past X-Men of an event that could rock the globe.

Singer recently tweeted an image of what appears to be concept art for Beast, and the design is a bit different from the one seen in X-Men: First Class.  Hit the jump for more, including the image.

Over the past seventeen years, Bryan Singer been able to jump from genre to genre with great results.  While he’s previously made superhero movies (X-Men, Superman Returns), thrillers (The Usual Suspects, Apt Pupil), and a film about trying to assassinate Hitler during WWII (Valkyrie), in his upcoming Warner Bros. fantasy Jack the Giant Slayer, he’s tackling a classic children’s fairy tale with a modern twist.  As usual, he’s delivered a fun ride that audiences will love.

Recently I landed an exclusive phone interview with Singer.  We talked about making the film, the CGI and 3D, his thoughts on 48fps, how they rewrote the whole film during pre-production, Twitter, X-Men: Days of Future Past, his Battlestar Galactica remake, and so much more.  Hit the jump for what he had to say.

Ever since Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, zombies have become synonymous with lifeless, dead-eyed beings, a void – existential nothingness in its simplest form. Zombies, as characterized, exhibit no human emotion, feeling, remembrance – and it’s been that way through Dawn of the Dead (1978) to Dawn of the Dead (2004) to The Walking Dead (2013). This Friday’s release Warm Bodies attempts to redefine the zombie not as death incarnate but merely as a lost and lonely soul… Sure the zombies still want to eat human brains but it has less to do with hunger than a need to connect. It should come as no surprise that the cure for all that brain munching, lethargic walking and indecipherable growling – as posed in Warm Bodies – is quite simple: love.

Nick Hoult stars in the picture as R, a zombie who slowly comes back to life after he falls in love with the beautiful ex-girlfriend (Teresa Palmer) of the guy he’s just eaten. Complications obviously then ensue. In the following interview with Hoult, he discusses imbuing the living dead with personality, transitioning from being a child actor (he was the titular boy in About A Boy), and his bevy of future film projects (Jack The Giant Slayer, Mad Max: Fury Road and X Men: Days of Future Past). For the full interview, hit the jump.

Apparently Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) didn’t listen when Wolverine told them to, “Go fuck yourself,” because Hugh Jackman is reportedly in negotiations to reprise his role in the sequel, X-Men: Days of Future Past. A brief, but fan-favorite moment in Matthew Vaughn’s X-Men: First Class, the gruff response from Logan when asked to join the X-Men was spot-on for his character and delivered by the face of the franchise in Jackman. With the director of two of the original films, Bryan Singer, now directing the sequel, it’s even more likely that we’ll get to see another classic moment. Hit the jump for more. 

We recently reported that Matthew Vaughn, director of X-Men: First Class, was stepping down from heading up the sequel, X-Men: Days of Future Past.  On the shortlist of replacement directors was one Bryan Singer, who was already acting in a producing capacity for the sequel.  Singer has now been confirmed as the director for X-Men: Days of Future Past.  There is still no explanation as to why Vaughn stepped aside, but he is in the process of inking a deal to stay on with the project as a producer.  (He did turn in the film’s screen treatment after all.) Hit the jump for more on Singer’s attachment to direct X-Men: Days of Future Past.

Director Matthew Vaughn (X-Men: First Class) has reportedly decided not to direct the sequel, X-Men: Days of Future Past.  At this time, there is no explanation for Vaughn’s departure, but this doesn’t mark the first change of heart in the director’s history.  He previously toyed with the notion of dropping out of helming 2010′s Kick-Ass before changing his mind and returning. He then opted out of directing the sequel, which is currently being directed by Jeff Wadlow (Never Back Down).  Fox wants to keep their July 18th, 2014 release date and will have to move on landing a new director soon, especially since the original cast, including Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy, are all expected to return.  Tops on their list is Bryan Singer (X-Men, X2).  Hit the jump for more. 

Bryan Singer, the director of X-Men and X2 and producer of the upcoming sequel to X-Men: First Class, has confirmed the title of the follow-up film.  Singer said in a recent interview that the title would be X-Men: Days of Future Past, a nod toward a storyline in the comics that ran in the early 80s.  It would certainly fit in with Singer’s claim that the sequel’s story is bold and ambitious, as the comics involve alternate timelines and a dystopian future in addition to meaty social conflicts like internment camps and assassinations.  Much more from Singer follows after the jump.

Shortly after Dave Elsey won the Saturn Award for Best Make-Up in X-Men: First Class (which he shared with Fran Needham and Conor O’Sullivan) I got to speak with him backstage.  We talked about what it was like to work on X-Men with Nicholas Hoult, what the Saturn Awards mean to him, new characters and other rumors for the upcoming sequel to X-Men: First Class, and more.   In addition, while I’d heard screenwriter David Hayter (X-Men, X2, Watchmen) was making his directorial debut with an original screenplay called Wolves, I didn’t know much about it.  But with Elsey doing the make-up, he revealed that casting has begun, it’s filming in Toronto, a stunt arranger who works with Jackie Chan has been brought onto the project, and he said:

“It’s very violent and bloody, but it’s less like The Wolfman and actually a lot more like an X-Men kind of movie.  It’s more of a kind of action movie.  Our werewolves…one of the big differences is our werewolves speak in this and they have hopes and dreams like anybody else.”

More after the jump.

Over the last few weeks, Sony has finally started to reveal details about director Neill Blomkamp’s (District 9) sci-fi pic Elysium.  Just as District 9 tackled issues of segregation and xenophobia, the first synopsis for Elysium reveals that the sci-fi, future-set story will be delving into the immigration debate.  Set in 2159, two classes of people are roughly divided: the wealthy live on a man-made space station called Elysium, while the rest of the humans inhabit an overpopulated and ruined Earth.  For more on the film, here’s Matt’s recap of the Comic-Con panel, the viral campaign, and Comic-Con interviews with Blomkamp and Matt Damon, Jodie Foster and Sharlto Copley.

Shortly after the panel, I got to speak with producer Simon Kinberg.  We talked about how he got involved in the project, how they decided what footage to bring, the recent test screenings, why they didn’t do 3D, and more.  In addition, with Kinberg writing the X-Men: First Class sequel with Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman, we talked about how that’s been going and what fans can look forward to.  Hit the jump to watch.

For the past six days, Sony’s The Amazing Spider-Man has held the top spot at the daily box office. It should surprise no one, therefore, that the reboot easily netted the weekend prize as well; earning an estimated $65 million from 4,318 locations. That gives the film a new domestic total of $140 million, a number that’s higher than early projections but lower than past entries in the Spider-Man series. Worldwide, the film has now earned a reported $341 million, which is not too bad for reboot…

Development on the sequel to last year’s stellar X-Men: First Class is moving full speed ahead with Matthew Vaughn returning as director and a firm release date recently set for July 18^th, 2014.  We know from the hubbub between Fox and Lionsgate over Jennifer Lawrence’s availability that she’ll have to wrap The Hunger Games: Catching Fire by the end of December in order to be free to shoot the X-Men sequel in January, but so far plot details have been firmly under wraps.  Now it appears that a title registration with the MPAA has clued us in on a possible—and ambitious—plot line for the X-Men: First Class follow-up.  Hit the jump for more.

Nothing came along to poison Snow White and the Huntsman. After a strong Friday launch, the Universal fantasy went on to earn an estimated $56.2 million from 3,773 locations over its first three days or almost as much as the rest of this weekend’s top five films combined. Meanwhile, Marvel’s The Avengers put another big feather (actually, two) in its cap: becoming the third highest grossing domestic and global release of all time.

20th Century Fox has made a doozy of a release date announcement today, with the first dates for two highly anticipated sequels and a big shift for Steven Spielberg’s next film.  Briefly:

• The currently untitled sequel to X-Men: First Class will be released on July 18th, 2014
• The sequel to Rise of the Planet of the Apes, now titled Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, will hit theaters on May 23rd, 2014
• Director Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi film Robopocalypse has been pushed from July 3rd, 2013 to April 25th, 2014.

Hit the jump for much more.

Even though director Matthew Vaughn (X-Men: First Class) has two upcoming sequel projects on his schedule, he’s chosen to add an original film into the mix.   After landing a sneak peek at the book, Vaughn put up his own money to option Lexicon, a thriller from author Max Barry that is due to hit shelves next year.  Vaughn would also write (or at least co-write) a script he plans to direct if the picture goes through development.  Set in a world where words can literally kill, Lexicon includes Barry’s signature riffs on branding, identity and government control.  Hit the jump for more on Lexicon and a recap of what else Vaughn has on his plate.

At this year’s CinemaCon, I was able to land an exclusive interview with Tom Rothman (Co-Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Fox Filmed Entertainment).  While we posted selected portions of the interview last week, after the jump you can read the entire conversation which covers a lot more than comic book movies.  I love getting to speak with actors and directors, but if you really want to find out which projects are moving forward and why certain decisions were made, a studio head has all the answers.

During the wide-ranging conversation we talked about 48 frames per second, the shift towards higher quality films on Fox’s slate, Prometheus (and it’s rating), Daredevil, Fantastic Four, the Chronicle sequel, The Wolverine, the Rise of the Planet of the Apes sequel, a New Mutants movie, A Good Day to Die Hard (Die Hard 5), and more.  Hit the jump to read what he had to say.