Our man Chris visited the set of X-Men: First Class to keep an eye on what director Matthew Vaughn and his team are up to, and he's got a few tidbits from the visit in the latest issue of Empire. Not least his thoughts on casting his leads, and the promise that this still looks like being a franchise.
Vaughn himself talks about his reasons for taking the job. "I've always wanted to do a movie set in the '60s. The difference is that now I have experience. On X3 [which he was at one point set to direct] it was cast and I just had to tell the story. Here we have to recast every role, recreate the '60s - which is not easy - and redesign everything. We've been playing catch-up, but it's working."
Ah, that recasting: Vaughn explains why he went for Michael Fassbender as Eric "Magneto" Lehnsherr and James McAvoy as Charles "Professor Xavier" Xavier. "I wasn't trying to cast the young Patrick [Stewart] or Ian [McKellen]. I was trying to cast the young Professor X and Magneto; what those characters are in my mind. For me, I'm trying to make a movie that stands on its own two feet. Hopefully there'll be a lot more of this version of the franchise."
For much more on** X-Men: First Class** (out on June 2), and why James McAvoy calls Professor X "a sex pest", pick up the new issue of Empire now.