Xcite! X-Men First Class: Unseen Promo Pics & Sequel News!

A lot has transpired since the last time that I gave you guys any X-Men First Class news & sequel scoops, so I present to you this post!
UPDATE (1/12/11): 20th Century Fox Chairman and CEO of Filmed Entertainment, Tom Rothman offers some GREAT news!
UPDATE (5/2/12): More soundbytes from Fassbender. Matthew Vaughn is officially helming XFC2. Jane Goldman's involvement in the film.
UPDATE (8/3/12): Jane Goldman talks about the chances of Jean Cyclops appearing in XFC2. Sequel screenwriter Simon Kinberg speaks at length about the possibilities...

And since I'm xtra generous, you'll find a sprinkling of previously unseen promo images for X-Men First Class! Like the gorgeous one below... :D

As per Home Media Magazine's Top 20 Rental chart, X-Men First Class is still making new fans out of ex-X-movie-haters by holding onto a #16 spot (as of 13/11/11)! Meanwhile BoxOfficeMojo shows the movie has made a domestic gross of $146,408,305 & $207,215,819 worldwide! So that makes a total of a whopping $353,624,124! Not bad for a movie that many thought would bomb due to the previous two X-movies that didn't live up to fans' expectations...

There's been loads of soundbytes about the sequel but I'm DYING to hear something officially from XFC director Matthew Vaughn cos I SO want him to be helming this sequel too! Read what everyone has to say below:
Lauren Shuler Donner- X-movies producer

Chris Petrikin, Fox Entertainment- Senior VP of Corporate Communications
Back in September, Chris stated that Fox regards X-Men "as a huge success. It reignited the franchise & has done more than $350 million worldwide." He added that the film's performance is strong enough for Fox to make more sequels in the future & characterized the film division's overall performance as "terrific".

Michael Fassbender
Michael spoke openly about his hopes for the sequel with Collider saying that he's waiting to "putting some ideas together myself, with James &, hopefully, Matthew, & we can see what happens next. I’m really interested to see what happens to Charles in the next one, & see how he becomes Professor X cause we got to see Erik turn into Magneto, in the first one. It will be interesting to see who shaves Charles’ head..."

He then spoke with MTV Splash Page reiterating his eagerness to see what happens with Charles Xavier. He also stated that he doesn't see Magneto as a bad guy yet, despite the way the movie ended as "human beings having been doing some bad shit to him."

UPDATE (5/2/12): Fassbender hinted to IFC that Magneto & Professor X may be on the same side once again in the sequel- "What’s interesting about Magneto & Professor X from the comic books as well, is there’s such a complexity to their relationship. It’s not just like clear-cut enemies; they’re best friends as well. In the comic books, even after they’ve had this sort of rift, Professor X asks Magneto to come back and look after the students at certain points. I think there’s always that complexity in their relationship & we want to keep that alive as possible, because that’s I think a really interesting thing — the conflict there."

James McAvoy
James first revealed that he's "spoken to Matthew about ideas, but I can’t tell you what they are because they may or may not be the story. One thing I liked about our one was that it was different from the other three films where the X-Men are the good guys, Wolverine’s figuring out who he is & Magneto is the bad guy. This was a completely different thing. Magneto wasn’t a bad guy, we were friends. We’re now set up to go back to the way the other movies are, so we’ve got to try to be cleverer than that."
He spoke a good deal to io9 about what he thought should be in the sequel:

*Charles has "lost his best friend, essentially, & he's just been paralyzed from the waist down. Which is just a huge, huge blow to his considerable ego. So he's got to deal with that. And I don't think we can just brush over that & go, 'yeah I'm in a wheelchair now' because Professor X is in a wheelchair. You've got to deal with that, I don't care if he's a superhero & has brain powers or not, he's just had a huge part of his physical life taken away from him, by someone he cares about more than anyone else."
*The good news is that Fox is not "rushing into it just because it did well. They want to make sure they get a good script, because if you can't get a good story there's no point in doing it..."
McAvoy was also interviewed by Collider but he didn't really say anything new than he did to io9...

Jason Flemyng
During a live chat between Jason Flemyng & Empire Magazine's Twitter followers, Jason admitted that he'd "love to do a sequel. We shot enough fight sequences to do an Azazel fight movie. But I don’t think that’s going to happen. The film had to take $350 million worldwide to merit a sequel. It took $356 million..."

He confirmed with DigitalSpy that "There was a benchmark that they had to hit box office-wise before they could start writing the next one, which they've started. We'll just see how the DVD goes & then fingers crossed I'll be bright red again by next summer."

YES that's right! Almost simultaneously SuperheroHype broke the news out that Simon Kinberg has been entrusted in penning the script for the movie's sequel! The good news is that Kinberg has got Sherlock Holmes on his scriptwriting resume. The bad news? X3 is also on that resume! While his being hired to write the script hasn't been officially confirmed we can only hope that Vaughn is gonna be on top of this to see that all goes well as before...

UPDATE (1/12/11): Rejoice X-Men First Class fans! ComingSoon.com recently had a word with 20th Century Fox Chairman and CEO of Filmed Entertainment, Tom Rothman, who confirmed that Fox is continuing the XFC story & they are trying to rope in Matthew Vaughn. I say this is a GREAT decision on both counts! :P This is what Rothman had to say on the status of the XFC & Rise of the Planet of the Apes sequels: "Both of them were really great scripts & so we have to be sure to get great scripts again. We're working hard on the scripts for both of them, but we have every hope of moving forward with them."

UPDATE (5/2/12): It's the news we been waiting for! Deadline announced that Fox has "closed a deal with Matthew Vaughn to come back & direct the sequel to X-Men: First Class, with Simon Kinberg writing the script & Bryan Singer back as producer." This leaves me very relieved indeed! :D

Now my only remaining concern is that Jane Goldman, XFC's co-writer & often Vaughn's creative partner, comes onboard at least for a rewrite. Before the official Vaughn-on-board announcement, she told MTV that "it's down to what Matthew [Vaughn] decides to do. If he decides he wants to direct the next one & if he wants me on board, I'm 100 percent there." However after the announcement, Goldman admitted to BleedingCool that at the moment she has 2 unannounced American films she's slated for, but as for XFC2 "I’m honestly not involved...Simon Kinberg is writing a draft right now." That don't sound good at all. She co-wrote XFC with Matthew & it was a pretty solid story. But I'm delighted Vaughn is onboard & I don't think it would be long before he pulls in Goldman for some tweaking...

UPDATE (8/3/12): Goldman spoke with FilmSchoolRejects about how Jean Grey & Cyclops could get involved in the sequels: "I can always make suggestions, & I did last time. Ultimately, those decisions come down to someone other than me. Would I, personally? Well, it’s really tricky. I think the route we had gone down with First Class— it’s sort of a question of where to go next I think those two characters were very strong, especially having Fassbender & McAvoy play them so brilliantly.

In a comic sense, I still think there’s room for an X-Men [film] with the original X-Men. In terms of how they fit in this new universe that First Class kicked off, I don’t know. I mean, yes, I think there’s room for that. All sorts of ideas have been talked about & Matthew has some particular ideas, &, in this case, all of those decisions will be done through Matthew." To read what more she had to say about the First Class movie franchise click the FSR link above.

MTV News interviewed Simon Kinberg & he had this to say: "I don’t know what the title is going to be but certainly I’m working on the sequel to X-Men First Class right now. I’m going to be writing & producing it, I’m starting now, with Matthew Vaughn directing.
"I’m a huge X-Men fan. I grew up loving the comic books & it was really exciting to be able to do the origin story of Xavier & Magneto, & getting those two actors, McAvoy & Fassbender, were really amazing. So being able to explore those characters with actors of that quality will be exciting a second time around, & doing some things unexpected with those characters, which is the plan."

Kinberg seemed to hint that the sequel may involve a lot more Magneto (YAY!). "That’s what was so cool about the first one & what we want to continue. Magneto becomes the villain ultimately of the franchise but he’s a much more complicated character as a young man. He’s someone you sympathize with, you care about, you root for even though you might not necessarily agree with his methods, you understand his philosophy."
Will Magneto still be a grey character or an all-out baddie? "We’re still figuring that out. I think the truth is ultimately that because Michael is such an interesting actor, he’ll never be full-on anything. He’ll have a villainous side & he’ll have a sympathetic human side you’ll be able to relate but you’ll also be afraid of him. He becomes Magneto, he says 'Call me Magneto' at the end of the first movie."

Here's some more unseen visual goodness of XFC!
Watch this space, as I'll be updating it with more unseen pics as they get released...

Oh & I almost forgot about the XFC wins at the Scream Awards 2011! It bagged two out of the 14 nominations: 
Best Fantasy Movie & Best Cameo (by Hugh Jackman)! Watch the cool Behind the Scenes video of Hugh filming his cameo below: