Simon Kinberg: Recasting inevitable for younger versions of established mutants in X-MEN: APOCALYPSE.

X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST writer Simon Kinberg was asked if the future mutants, such as Storm (Halle Berry), Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) and Cyclops (James Marsden) would return for X-MEN: APOCALYPSE during Yahoo Movies UK #AskKinberg Q&A. Kinberg confirms that certain characters will obviously have to be recast, as they’ll have to appear much younger in the 1983 timeline.

“[X-Men: Apocalypse] really follows the stories of the ‘First Class’ X-Men and the others of that generation of X-Men,” says Kinberg. “So in [in terms of the future X-Men returning for] future X-Men films, perhaps, but in ‘Apocalypse’ it will really be the continuation of the past. If we included some of the original X-Men such as Storm, Jean, Scott and others in ‘Apocalypse’ we would have to recast them because [it] takes place a good 20 years before X1 – it’d be very hard to do.

“Halle, Famke and Jimmy and others have done such wonderful jobs of bringing those characters to life and they’re so identified with the parts now, so it would be a toll-task,” he continues. “But I also would of said before ‘First Class’ that there’d be no way we could find actors who could stand alongside Ian Mckellen and Patrick Stewart. I think we managed to with Michael and James finding their own interpretations of the characters [and] not doing an impersonation.

“So are we gonna have to recast? If some of those characters are in the movie, we would, so we’ll see.”

Apocalypse arrives in theaters May 27, 2016.