Alan Cumming, who stars as Loki in the action-comedy Son of the Mask, told ComingSoon.net that he expects to start shooting X-Men 3 this summer. Cumming played mutant Kurt Wagner (aka Nightcrawler) in director Bryan Singer's X2: X-Men United.
"I signed for two films, so I'm going to. The last I heard is that we're starting on the 20th of June, but they don't have a script or a director yet so that may be pushed a little bit. But they have to release it in May of 2006 for some reason so it's gonna be shot in the summer," Cumming said.
"And it's one of these things, I kind of just want to know I'm going to do it cause it affects your whole life. You can do other things cause you know that it's a large amount of time; I'm going to a show on Broadway which I moved to January of next year just to make sure I finished X-Men…Every film you do you have to tell them just in case they're going to get it together really fast. You're under some options; it's quite weird."
After directing the first two "X-Men" films, Singer has moved onto Superman, but Cumming is surprisingly not disappointed. "No. I'm not disappointed; I cannot deny that. I think he's really talented and I'm very proud of the film and I think it's a great film. I didn't enjoy working with him on the film."
Cumming didn't really have any suggestions for a new director though. "No. My mom? It's a really hard act to follow."
He had to go through hours of makeup to transform into Nightcrawler for the last film. "I have this brilliant idea," Cumming added, "I want some kind of fabulous, crazy, terrible thing-some terrible accident happens to Nightcrawler and his face turns white."
New Line's Son of the Mask, also starring Jamie Kennedy and Traylor Howard, opens February 18th.