The flurry of casting announcements for Fox's X-Men: First Class continues today with news from Variety that Kevin Bacon has struck a deal to play the film's villain.
The studio is keeping a lid on which of the countless antagonists from Marvel's mutant mythos the veteran actor might portray. However, when word of the talks with Bacon trickled out nearly a week ago, fan speculation quickly centered on Mister Sinister, the long-lived geneticist who served as a major villain of Marvel’s X-Men universe from the late ’80s to the mid-’90s.
Bacon joins a growing cast that includes James McAvoy as Charles Xavier, Michael Fassbender as Erik Lensherr, Alice Eve as Emma Frost, Nicholas Hoult as Henry McCoy, Caleb Landry Jones as Sean Cassidy, and Lucas Till as Alex Summers. Kick-Ass star Aaron Johnson has been rumored as Scott Summers.
Directed by Matthew Vaughn, X-Men: First Class centers on the early friendship between Xavier and Lensherr, who work with other mutants to stop a global threat. In the process, a riff between them opens, beginning the war between Magneto’s Brotherhood and Professor X’s X-Men. The film opens on June 3, 2011.