It looks like X-Men: Dark Phoenix, the upcoming seventh installment in Fox's X-Men movie franchise, is going to offer a new direction for at least one of its core characters.

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Speaking to Entertainment Tonight Canada! at the cinematic extravaganza that is the Toronto International Film Festival, actor Nicholas Hoult, who has played Hank McCoy/The Beast in the four most recent X-Men movies, revealed that the there are currently about four weeks left of principal photography on the movie. He also revealed his personal motivation for returning to the role.

"It's very different for Beast this time and that was part of the appeal for doing the movie for me." the actor said. "Simon Kinberg, who wrote [X-Men: The Last Stand, X-Men: Days of Future Past and X-Men: Apocalypse], is directing this time and he had great ideas where he wanted the character to go, so it was exciting."

During the original Dark Phoenix Saga storyline the Beast is a member of the Avengers who temporarily rejoins his erstwhile colleagues just as they are attempting to subdue an increasingly irrational Phoenix. He is also much more at ease with his blue furry self than his cinematic counterpart. It will be interesting to see how Kinberg and crew reconcile the differences between the source text and film in the final finished movie.

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Opening November 2, 2018, X-Men: Dark Phoenix stars James McAvoy as Charles Xavier, Michael Fassbender as Magneto, Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique, Nicholas Hoult as Beast, Sophie Turner as Jean Grey, Alexandra Ship as Storm, Tye Sheridan as Cyclops and Kodi Smit-McPhee as Nightcrawler.