Movies

Original Colossus Actor Returning For 'X-Men: Dark Phoenix', But Maybe Not As Colossus

X-Men Dark Phoenix Colossus
By Ben Pearson

Filming on X-Men: Dark Phoenix is currently underway, but one of the superhero film's characters is still shrouded in mystery. Actor Daniel Cudmore, who played the super-strong Russian mutant Colossus in X2, X-Men: The Last Stand, and X-Men: Days of Future Past, has revealed that he is also a part of the upcoming sequel, but he didn't confirm whether or not he's playing Colossus or an entirely different character. Hmm...

Comic Book Resources points us to a recent tweet from Cudmore, who mysteriously leaves his Dark Phoenix character's identity a secret:

The person asking Cudmore who he's playing wondered if he was reprising his role as Colossus or sliding into the role of Gladiator, who is a similarly-jacked alien being who serves as the leader of the Imperial Guard of the Shi'ar Empire. In the comics, Gladiator is one of eight Guardsmen who faces off against the X-Men in an effort to destroy the Phoenix, a cosmic threat to the universe that essentially took over Jean Grey during the famed Phoenix saga. Despite that story being hinted at in previous X-Men movies (most notably the first two sequels), X-Men: Dark Phoenix apparently intends to present a more faithful adaptation on the big screen (within reason, because some of the stuff that happens in the comics is too convoluted for a blockbuster film).

The fact that Cudmore's playing coy about this admittedly makes me more curious about it than I would be otherwise, so mission accomplished on that front. There's the chance he's playing Gladiator or yet another character altogether, but I can also see why he might want to remain tight-lipped even if he was just coming back to play Colossus since there are now two Colossuses (Colossi?) in the X-Men film universe. Cudmore turned down the role in Deadpool because his voice would have been dubbed, so Serbian actor Stefan Kapicic provided the character's voice in that spin-off movie, with multiple people working on the motion capture performance of the character's body.

Either way, it seems as if Cudmore wrapped his work on Dark Phoenix recently, since he recently tweeted about leaving Montreal, where the production was being filmed. New York Comic Con is coming up in a few weeks, so maybe there will be some sort of surprise X-Men panel there that can shed some light on this situation.

Dark Phoenix is the directorial debut of Simon Kinberg, a longtime writer and producer on the X-Men series. It stars Jennifer Lawrence (Mystique), Michael Fassbender (Magneto), James McAvoy (Professor Xavier), Nicholas Hoult (Beast), Alexandra Shipp (Storm), Sophie Turner (Jean Grey), Tye Sheridan (Cyclops), Kodi Smit-McPhee (Nightcrawler), and Jessica Chastain. It hits theaters on November 2, 2018.

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