Of all the actors announced during the massive Avengers: Doomsday's cast reveal live-stream earlier this year, Alan Cumming might have been the most surprising.
Cumming made his one 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. Wagner didn't show up in again until Kodi Smit-McPhee took over as a younger take on the character in X-Men: Apocalypse.
Cumming has been happy to chat about his return as Nightcrawler, and may have revealed a little too much about his Doomsday role in a recent interview.
"Right now, I'm doing it again. I'm playing Nightcrawler again and was learning stunts yesterday for some fight scene," said the actor. "I'm sort of learning these fights and I'm like, 'What, who am I fighting with?' [They’re like,] 'You're hitting Pedro Pascal against the head.' I can't quite believe [that]."
Cumming's comments obviously suggested that we will see the teleporting mutant do battle with Mr. Fantastic at some point in the movie, and the actor has now revealed that he did get in a small bit of trouble for spilling the tea.
Cumming was a guest host on Jimmy Kimmel Live, interviewing Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach after the LA premiere of The Fantastic Four. When Cumming asked how they felt about having to keep Marvel's secrets, Pascal responded: "The biggest leak we’ve had comes from our host... did you get in trouble?"
"My publicist called me. The wrath of a publicist is not a wrath you want," replied Cumming.
Both actors went on to play down the reveal somewhat, but after everything we've heard about Doomsday since, the fact that two characters will throw hands at some point really shouldn't be considered some kind of major spoiler! It seems highly likely that we will see the entire team of X-Men face-off against The Avengers, after all.
Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars were recently hit with significant delays, 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.
You can check out the full (for now) Doomsday cast list below.
• 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
• Wyatt Russell as U.S. Agent
• 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
• Robert Downey Jr as Doctor Doom
• Ebon Moss-Bachrach as The Thing
• Anthony Mackie as Captain America