Bryan Singer is now producing X-Men: First Class

Deadline has some good news and some bad news for X-Men fans. The bad news is that, as was speculated last week, Bryan Singer will not be directing X-Men: First Class and will instead produce alongside Lauren Shulder Donner and X3 writer Simon Kinberg.

Singer is deep into pre-production on Jack the Giant Killer and 20th Century Fox don’t want to wait until 2012 for him to start on First Class. It’s a shame as X-Men 2, in my opinion, is still up there as one of the great comicbook movies of the past decade and I was looking forward to seeing Singer’s take on the formation of the X-Men.

The good news, however, is that he is still on-board as producer. He hasn’t left the franchise like he did in 2005, and 20th Century Fox will still be going ahead with the script he wrote with Jamie Moss. I suppose we could say he will be ‘godfather’ to the X-Men like what Christopher Nolan is to Batman/Superman. The other good news is that now 20th Century Fox can move ahead with the project (they are currently talking to other directors) and we could be seeing the X-Men back on our screens as early next year.

What I don’t want to happen now is for Fox to rush it out for next summer. Thor has been filming for months now, and Captain America is gearing up for shooting in June after being in pre-production since the beginning of the year. Both will be released next summer (Thor in May, Captain America in July) so ideally Fox should be aiming for an August/September/October release. The only major competition in those months currently is The Smurfs in August and Underworld 4 in September. October is empty (although probably for good reason).

Deadline suggests that filming could begin towards the end of the summer, so over the upcoming months and weeks we should be hearing who’ll be replacing Bryan Singer as director (crucial) and there will also be the issue of finding a bunch of fresh faced actors to play the X-Men.

Anyone have any suggestions for director?