X-Men First Class Rumors: Multiple Man Appearing? Beast Fired?

I don't know if it's the impending holiday weekend and consequent lack of real news, but today is rife with rumor. There's the Mad Max one (which I've been assured by a couple people now is actually not rumor) and some Scream 4 stories that leave me dubious, and now a couple of rumors about the cast and character breakdown for X-Men First Class.

The first X-Men rumor is that Jamie Madrox, aka the Multiple Man, is going to appear in the film as a student at Professor Xavier's school. The character has already shown up in Fox's mutant franchise, as he was a fairly prominent part of the third X-Men film. Who'll play him, and what is his role in First Class? We don't know — at this point it's just a rumor that he's even in the movie. Discuss below. [CBM]

After the break, what's going on with Beast?

The Daily Mail (via The Playlist) reports that Benjamin Walker, who is only a few years younger than James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender (who, remember, are meant to be his elders in the film) was let go, with Fox deciding to find a younger actor to play Beast.

But then (so the story goes — again, despite being from the most earthbound writer at the Daily Mail, it's still the Daily Mail) Fox wasn't happy with the younger actors who tested, and asked Walker back. Current report is that the whole turn of events didn't go down so well and that he may do a Broadway production instead.

Again, treat this as slow news day rumor. It's an interesting one, given that Fox seems to be picking actors kind of willy-nilly — the fact that we know some of the ancillary names before the actors for Cyclops and Jean Grey is pretty strange. But there's no confirmation, so right now it's just something to talk about.