Singer: No Wolverine in X-Men First Class

Bryan Singer, producer of the upcoming prequel, X-Men: First Class, recently addressed rumors of a Wolverine cameo in the film. You may be wondering why the topic is such a big deal. Well, Wolverine was not one of the first of Professor Charles Xavier’s students in the comics. He hitched his star to the X-men later. There are some Marvel comics fans who love the Canadian wild man and expect to see him wherever the X-men are. There are others who think the wily mutant with claws detracts from the X-men franchise, hogging the spotlight so that other mutants fail to shine.

So will Wolverine appear in First Class, or won’t he? The actor, Hugh Jackman, was, after all recently spotted in my neck of the woods. Jekyll Island, to be exact, which is not very far from Tybee Island, the coastal Georgia town where parts of First Class are said to be filming. Well, according to the CoventryTelegraph, Singer had this to say:

“We’ve set First Class in a time when the X-Men were conceived in the early 60s, up against political events that were happening – the early civil rights movement – and we have these kinds of events at a time when the world didn’t know mutants existed. [Wolverine is] not in the movie, he’s in the Wolverine movies.”

A Fox spokesman reiterated, “X-Men hasn’t started shooting in Georgia yet and if Hugh was in Georgia, it wasn’t for this movie.”

X-Men: First Class, directed by Matthew Vaughn hits theaters (without Wolverine) June 3, 2011. For news regarding the Wolverine sequel, follow the link. Azazel, Riptide, and Emma Frost are in the prequel.