Last night, X-Men: Days of Futures Past director Bryan Singer tweeted the first look at James in his very 70′s look as Professor X. What do you guys think?

Today is James McAvoy’s 34th birthday, and we here at James McAvoy Fan wish him the most wonderful day with his friends and family. After getting to see James live on stage last night for an incredible performance of Macbeth, I am so excited to follow James’ career over the next year, especially with projects like Filth, Eleanor Rigby and X:Men on the horizon. Feel free to leave your birthday comments!

So with all the Oscar hardware handed out, back to what Hollywood knows how to do best: make reboots and sequels. And one project Hollywood keeps trying to make happen is new version of “The Crow.” At one time, the movie was gearing up as a vehicle for Bradley Cooper with “28 Weeks Later” helmer Juan Carlos Fresnadillo directing, but they both wound up leaving the project by the end of 2011, and not much has been heard since. But it seems a new face may be eager to go goth.

Bloody Disgusting reports that James McAvoy is circling the lead role of the reincarnated Eric Draven, who is murdered and returns to avenge the death of his girlfriend. Huh. It’s not the first time the actor has put on his blockbuster pants, as he’s getting ready to make his second mutant movie, “X-Men: Days Of Future Past,” this spring. It’s not exactly the choice that comes immediately to mind, but then again, neither was Cooper, and we suppose it offers up the chance for total reinvention for whoever takes it on.

With the actor hitting the press circuit any time now for his two spring thrillers — “Welcome To The Punch” and “Trance” — he’ll likely address these rumors, so we’ll soon see if he’ll put on the paint or is merely kicking the tires. We’d wager McAvoy will want to know who may be directing before he commits, but it’s certainly an adventurous part if he does take it on. Thoughts?

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With Ridley Scott executive producing, James McAvoy in the lead, a supporting cast that includes Mark Strong, Andrea Riseborough, Peter Mullan and more, all in a gritty crime flick directed by a rising Evan Creevy, perhaps expectations were a bit higher for “Welcome To The Punch.” We figured it might be the kind of thing that rolled into SXSW or Sundance, but instead, you can just check it out at home at the end of March.

IFC Flims has given the picture a March 27th limited theatrical date with a VOD bow to follow three days later on March 30th. Hmm… The film tells the story of story of two arch-nemeses: detective Max Lewinsky (McAvoy) and master criminal Jacob Sternwood (Strong). When Sternwood’s son turns up in a hospital due to a failed heist, he’s forced to return to London – giving Max his second chance to get the one criminal who got away, and along the way he uncovers a vast conspiracy.

Generic thriller or something a bit meatier? Let’s hope for the latter, but with Danny Boyle’s “Trance” also arriving just over a week later on April 5th, let’s hope it doesn’t get forgotten about entirely.

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ThePlaylist have just confirmed that James’ upcoming Danny Boyle picture Trance has now been given a US release date of April 5, and two new posters have also been released. Check them out in the gallery.

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Film Productions > Trance (2013) > Posters

Not content with playing a younger Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier in X-Men: First Class and next year’s X-Men: Days of Future Past, James McAvoy has now expressed his desire to portray a young Ian McKellen. However, he’s not looking to step on Michael Fassbender’s toes by taking on the dual roles of Professor X and Magneto – instead, he wants to play Gandalf in an adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion.

“I’d like to play Gandalf,” McAvoy tells Total Film. “The Silmarillion [is] a collection of poems and songs that chart the ancient history of Middle-earth. My true geek is coming to the fore, but they’re really, really beautiful stories. In part of that is the genesis of Gandalf, or Mithrandir, or Stormcrow, or any of his many, many names.”

Published posthumously by Christopher Tolkien in 1977, The Silmarillion is comprised of five parts and recounts 7000 years of history, including the creation of Eä (the universe), its various supernatural beings, and the First, Second and Third Ages of Middle-earth. Sadly for McAvoy, Gandalf’s involvement in the text is limited to the final section, ‘Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age’, which has of course already been explored by Peter Jackson with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Furthermore, the rights to the book are still held by Christopher Tolkien, who isn’t much of a fan of Jackson’s Middle-earth movies, so don’t expect this one to move forward any time soon…

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It has just been announced that James will take to the London stage again in a Trafalgar Transformed production of Macbeth. The actor will play Macbeth from February 9 to April 27, 2013 at Trafalgar Studios in Jamie Lloyd’s Shakespeare adaptation, and you can pre-book your tickets here. I already have mine!

X-Men: First Class‘s James McAvoy and Game of Thrones‘ Natalie Dormer will lead the cast on the forthcoming BBC Radio 4 production.

Benedict Cumberbatch, Sophie Okenodo, Anthony Head, Bernard Cribbins and horror legend Christopher Lee will also lend their voices to the adaptation.

Gaiman posted the announcement and cast list, alongside a photograph of members of the production, on his blog.

“The adaptation is by Dirk Maggs, who did the last three Hitchhiker’s Guide Radio adaptations,” he wrote.

“He’s co-directing it with producer Heather Larmour, who is the one who went off and made this happen after a small enthusiastic chat in a London coffee shop much earlier this year – the kind of conversation that you have that normally just leaves you feeling happy, but doesn’t actually turn into anything real. This time it did.”

Neverwhere originally aired as a television show on BBC Two in 1996. Gaiman later published the story as a novel, which was also adapted into a comic series by Mike Carey and Glenn Fabry in 2005.

The radio play will debut in early 2013.

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It looks like James McAvoy won’t be reuniting with his Atonement and Starter for 10 co-star Benedict Cumberbatch after all. Earlier this month, we learned that McAvoy had signed on for Bill Condon‘s WikiLeaks movie in the role of Daniel Domscheit-Berg, right-hand man to Julian Assange (Cumberbatch). Unfortunately, negotiations have now broken down over McAvoy’s commitment to X-Men: Days of Future Past.

When McAvoy’s name cropped up a few weeks ago, the word was that Condon’s movie would shoot around the actor’s X-Men schedule. As of now, however, DreamWorks has fast-tracked the project for a January start.

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It’s a casting X-gravaganza! Director Bryan Singer tweeted today that Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart will be reprising their respective roles as Magneto and Prof. X in X-Men: Days of Future Past, and they’ll be joined by X-Men: First Class stars Michael Fassbender as Magneto, and James McAvoy as Prof. X.

Wait, what?

For the geek uninitiated, Days of Future Past is also the title of an X-Men comic book storyline from 1981, which alternated between a dystopian future in which mutants are living in internment camps, and the present day mutants working to prevent that future from happening. With this casting news, Singer has all but confirmed that the next X-Men film will reconstitute that storyline a bit, making the Fassbender/McAvoy mutants in the go-go 1960s the “present day” storyline, and the McKellen/Stewart mutants in the early 21st century the ones trapped in a bleak alternate future. This is likely a way back to the series for Stewart, given that his Prof. X was (more or less) killed off in 2006′s X-Men: The Last Stand.

Curiously, Singer also officially announced that X-Men: First Class‘s Jennifer Lawrence and Nicholas Hoult are also returing as Mystique and Beast, respectively. Does this mean Rebecca Romijn and Kelsey Grammer will be playing their 21st century counterparts? All Singer would say in his final tweet: “More to come…”

This also officially means that McKellen is set to go up against himself: Both X-Men: Days of Future Past and The Hobbit: There and Back Again are scheduled to hit theaters on July 18, 2014.

Geek brains are exploding everywhere.

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