Busy day for the class of Matthew Vaughn’s “X-Men: First Class”. On the heels of earlier news that Aaron Johnson will probably play young Cyclops in the upcoming superhero movie, comes this official word that Caleb Landry Jones will play the Irish superhero Banshee (left), while Nicholas Hoult will play the Beast aka Hank McCoy (bottom), a role that originally was offered to actor Ben Walker before, well, it got all nutty.
In the comics, Banshee is Sean Cassidy, an Irish mutant with the power to literally talk your ears off using his supersonic scream. He’s a mouthful, if you will. Ahem.
Beast, of course, is Hank McCoy, a mutant with ape-like superhuman physical strength and agility and oversized hands and feet. And oh yeah, blue fur. He has lots of those, too. Beast is also one of the more eloquent and learned member of the X-Men, as you can tell from the fact that he wears glasses. Glasses = smarts, doncha know.
Jones and Hoult will join James McAvoy as Professor X and Michael Fassbender as Magneto, two close friends who fall out, eventually forming their own super mutant teams. Matthew Vaughn is directing from a script by he wrote with Jane Goldman, while Bryan Singer produces for Fox.
