After a couple of trade magazine newsbreaks, we’re back in more normal territory for the latest casting announcement for X-Men: Apocalypse. To whit, director Bryan Singer’s Twitter and Instagram feed. He has now revealed that young newcomer Lana Condor (a superheroic name in itself) will be playing Jubilee in the new film.
[I'd officially like to welcome our newest mutant #JubilationLee, #Jubilee @LanaCondor to #XMEN #Apocalypse](https://instagram.com/p/0qVuAKxDxJ/)
A photo posted by Bryan Singer (@bryanjaysinger) on Mar 25, 2015 at 11:57am PDT
Continuing the Apocalypse trend of featuring X-Men team members who appeared in the pre-First Class days, Jubilee has been played by Katrina Florece and Kea Wong across X-Men, X2 and** X-Men: The Last Stand**, with Condor now taking over the role. Concept art for X-Men: Days Of Future Past showed Jubilee was under consideration for the previous adventure, but with that film already so full of characters, the smart choice was made to hold her over for this story.
Jubilee’s comics backstory includes the fact that she was raised in the swanky locale of Beverly Hills, but saw her life come crashing down around her when a hitman took out her parents in a case of mistaken identity. Living for a time as an orphan, her mutant power of generating blinding and explosive energy "fireworks" manifests itself and she uses it to entertain people and earn money before ending up with Professor X and company.
Naturally, we expect a lot of her story to change for Apocalypse, which is set in the 1980s and finds the likes of the prof (James McAvoy), Magneto (Michael Fassbender), Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) and Beast (Nicholas Hoult) dealing with the powerful Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac).
Also aboard? Younger versions of Storm, Cyclops, Nightcrawler and Jean Grey, played by Alexandra Shipp, Tye Sheridan, Kodi Smit-McPhee and Sophie Turner, alongside returning First Class veteran Rose Byrne as Moira MacTaggert.
Singer will get the cameras rolling next month in Montreal with X-Men: Apocalypse due out on May 19, 2016.