Of all the actors announced as being part of last year's massive Avengers: Doomsday's cast reveal live-stream, Alan Cumming might have been the most surprising.
Cumming made his first and only appearance in 20th Century Fox's X-Men franchise as Kurt Wagner, aka Nightcrawler, in X2, but declined the studio's offer to reprise the role for the third film because he had no interest in sitting through the arduous makeup process again.
The actor has spoken about his "hellish" time in the makeup chair on several occasions, but it seems this was far from his only negative takeaway from his time working on the sequel.
During an interview with Deadline, Cumming discussed his return in Doomsday, explaining why he jumped at the chance to revisit the character after his "shocking" X-Men 2 experience.
“There were things that happened on the [X2] set that were just shocking to me. The working environment was very, very wrong and very just unacceptable. And we all have talked about it in various ways over the years… Going back to it after all these years was great because I really liked the character, and so to go back and play him now and also this film is like superhero soup. There’s so many of them in it. I just can’t keep up.”
Though Cumming doesn't mention him by name, we're pretty sure he's referring to the behaviour of director Bryan Singer.
The Traitors host also confirmed that Doomsday will feature a few cast members/characters that have yet to be announced.
“Sometimes there were secret names in it because they didn’t want to let out this certain character was coming back, so they called them somebody else in the script. It was so confusing.”
Based on the leaks and rumors, we'd say Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds), Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man are a given, but we have also heard that Marvel has some surprises in store that none of the scoopers have reported on.
We're still waiting on a first trailer for Doomsday. The latest rumors suggest mid-June, but there are also whispers that it could be with us by the end of May.
Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars were hit with significant delays last year, with Doomsday now set to arrive in theaters on December 18, 2026, and Secret Wars positioned for December 17, 2027.
Both movies will be directed by the Russo brothers, who also make their MCU return after helming Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame.
"Being able to create stories and explore characters within the Marvel Universe fulfilled a life-long dream of ours, and we discovered a powerful connection with audiences in each film that we made. We’re thrilled to collaborate once again with Kevin, Lou and the entire Marvel team to bring this epic adventure in storytelling to new and surprising places for both the fans and ourselves”, said The Russos in a statement after the SDCC panel.
Doomsday will star:
Paul Rudd as Ant-Man, Simu Liu as Shang-Chi, Tom Hiddleston as Loki, Lewis Pullman as Sentry, Florence Pugh as Yelena, Danny Ramirez as Falcon, Ian McKellen as Magneto, Sebastian Stan as Bucky, Winston Duke as M’Baku, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Kelsey Grammer as Beast, James Marsden as Cyclops, Channing Tatum as Gambit, and Wyatt Russell as U.S. Agent
Along with Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm, Rebecca Romijn as Mystique, Patrick Stewart as Professor X, Alan Cumming as Nightcrawler, Letitia Wright as Black Panther, Tenoch Huerta Mejia as Namor, Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards, Hannah John-Kamen as Ghost, Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm, David Harbour as Red Guardian, Ebon Moss-Bachrach as The Thing, Anthony Mackie as Captain America, and, of course, Robert Downey Jr. as Doctor Doom.