It’s looking like Patrick Stewart won’t return to the role of telepathic mutant Charles Xavier in X-Men: Apocalypse, but fans will be happy to hear that he could reprise the role for the next Wolverine movie.
Speaking with Oregon Live, Stewart confirmed the chances of Xavier’s appearance in the third installment of the rebooted X-Men franchise were slim, but revealed that he’s been discussing the possibility of teaming up with Wolverine himself, Hugh Jackman, for the next installment of that character’s spin-off franchise.
“What I’m very excited about is that we have been talking about a Wolverine movie, which would team Hugh Jackman and myself together,” he said. “Wolverine and Professor Xavier. That would be a very different sort of X-Men from the four movies that I’ve already done.”
Stewart’s future with the franchise was uncertain after 2014’s X-Men: Days Of Future Past effectively reset the timeline for the X-Men movies and made the younger versions of Charles Xavier and Magneto played by James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender, respectively, the primary focus of the franchise going forward. Still, Days Of Future Past alluded to the existence of an alternate timeline in its closing moments — one in which the cast of the original X-Men trilogy is still alive and fighting the good fight against super-powered villains.
Given that alternate timeline and the peek into it that was provided in the final scenes of Days Of Future Past, it’s reasonable to speculate that the Wolverine spinoff series could unfold in a new timeline with Stewart and any of the original X-Men cast members. The last film in the Wolverine spinoff series, 2013’s The Wolverine, is the third-highest grossing film in the X-Men franchise.
For his part, all Stewart could reveal about his potential team-up with Jackman’s Wolverine is what he’d like to get out of the project.
“I’d just like to get to drive his motorbike, I think,” said Stewart.
