Bryan Singer adds Quicksilver to X-Men: Days Of Future Past, possibly just to annoy Joss Whedon
Proving some major movie studios just aren’t cut out for sharing, Fox has decided to add the super speedster Quicksilver to its upcoming X-Men: Days Of Future Past, even though Marvel Studios recently announced that it plans to include the character in Joss Whedon’s The Avengers 2. X-Men director Bryan Singer tweeted the announcement Thursday, saying American Horror Story actor Evan Peters will play the character.
Quicksilver, along with his twin sister Scarlet Witch, is one of a handful of characters whose rights are shared between multiple studios; essentially, Marvel Studios owns the parts of the character’s history where he’s an Avengers team member, while Fox owns the parts where he’s a mutant and the son of Magneto, and neither studio can use or mention aspects of the character owned by the other. This is the first time a jointly controlled character has appeared in a superhero movie, and Singer himself cheekily acknowledged the overlap in his original, since-deleted tweet: “Before he was an Avenger, he was just a REALLY fast kid. Thrilled to say Evan Peters is joining X-Men: Days Of Future Past as Quicksilver.”
While Quicksilver presents rich character possibilities for both the X-Men and the Avengers franchises, Fox may have slightly pettier reasons to include the character. According to The Hollywood Reporter’s Borys Kit, including “the character so late in the game (X-Men is already shooting) is Fox's way of asserting the character and a dig at Marvel.” Rather than use this as an opportunity for some inter-studio cooperation, Fox and Marvel’s parent company Disney are reportedly now engaged in a behind-the-scenes pissing contest over who really deserves to use Quicksilver, with Disney arguing that it will make more extensive use of the character and Fox just pointing out that Days Of Future Past comes out before The Avengers 2, so it kind of wins by default. Indeed, while Joss Whedon has suggested Quicksilver and his sister “represent the part of the world that wouldn’t necessarily agree with The Avengers” and so “they’re not there to make things easier” for Earth’s mightiest heroes, Singer reportedly only wants to use the character in a single action sequence, which suggests Peters isn’t about to have any big father-son chats with either Michael Fassbender or Ian McKellen. And if Quicksilver’s role in the movie really is one that could be filled by any old mutant speedster, that once again means that Northstar—and the proud, superhero-loving people of Quebec—is the real loser here.