Taylor Lautner Wanted For X-Men: First Class But Unavailable, Kevin Bacon's Role Revealed? Also: Bryan Singer Debunks Wolverine 2 Rumors

Over the weekend, producer Bryan Singer was questioned at a church event about recent X-Men: First Class casting rumors and Wolverine 2. Also, a new unconfirmed report regarding what role Kevin Bacon might play in the upcoming X-Men prequel hit the web. We cover all this and more, after the jump.

There actually seems to be a bit of legitimacy to the rumors that Twilight star Taylor Lautner was being courted for X-Men First Class. Singer confirms to ScifiWire the following:

"I wanted Taylor [Lautner] to do it, I really did. He's doing a movie in Pittsburgh called Abduction and then he's got the next Twilight movie. We talked about it a lot, he is a friend, and I really wanted to make it work. It just doesn't look like it's possible to do it."

Singer also debunked the rumor that he would be helming Wolverine 2:

"It's not what I'm going to do right now, the next project for me next year, in London, is Jack the Giant Killer that is set in the 1300s and it's very fun. It will be a big movie."

I believe the rumor started because Jackman was trying to convince Singer to direct, even going as far as hiring Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects, Valkyrie) to pen the screenplay. Last we heard, McQuarrie had handed in a draft of the script and Fox was hoping to shoot the film beginning in January 2011. If that is the case, Singer definitely wouldn't have be available in that time frame.

Back to First Class — last week it was reported that Kevin Bacon had been offered the role of a villain in the superhero prequel. Some readers speculated that he might be playing Mr. Sinister. The not so credible Forces of Geek claim that Bacon will be playing Sebastian Shaw in the film. Here is some information on Shaw from wikipedia:

A mutant, Shaw possesses the ability to absorb kinetic energy and transform it into raw strength. He is the leader of the New York branch of the Hellfire Club, an exclusive secret society bent on world domination, although to the public, he is a legitimate businessman and ordinary human. He once funded the mutant-hunting Sentinel program to keep it under his thumb. In 2009, Shaw was named IGN's 55th Greatest Comic Book Villain of All Time. His power first manifested shortly after he was accepted to engineering school (speculated to be Carnegie Mellon University) and his father Jacob Shaw died after he contracted an incurable disease. Sebastian Shaw devoted himself to his studies and created Shaw Industries, becoming a millionaire by age 30 and a billionaire by age 40.

But remember, Forces of Geek previously claimed Olivia Munn would be playing Wasp in Iron Man 2/Avengers and that Rosamund Pike had been cast as Emma Frost in First Class. Both stories turned out to be false. So for now we'll just consider this an unconfirmed rumor.