It’s almost five years now since Disney completed its takeover of 20th Century Fox, and we’re only just starting to see the mutants of the X-Men franchise make their mark on the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Things will obviously ramp up a gear next year as Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool and Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine (along with a whole bunch of expected cameos) with the release of Deadpool 3, and Marvel took the opportunity to lay the foundations for that movie (and Secret Wars?) with the mid-credits scene of The Marvels as Kelsey Grammer became the second Fox X-Men actor after Patrick Stewart’s Professor X in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness to reprise their role for Marvel Studios with a cameo as Dr. Hank McCoy, a.k.a. Beast.
If you’re yet to see The Marvels, the film ends with Teyonah Parris’ Monica Rambeau trapped in an alternate universe where she meets a variant of her mother Maria (Lashana Lynch) as Photon alongside a CGI Beast voiced by Grammer. It’s left on a cliffhanger as to whether Monica finds herself in the X-Men universe of the Fox movies, but its a tease we’ll presumably have answered in the near future as Grammer has revealed to The Wrap that he expects we’ll be seeing his Beast again soon.
“It is my hope that you will [see him again],” said Grammer, who is currently back on the small screen starring in the Frasier revival. “I can say with a certain amount of confidence that you will. I would love to. I’ve always wanted to play him again. I see him as an extraordinary character, a real character of gravitas and importance in our culture. I’m delighted Beast is back and hope he’s back in a real way.”
While we wait to see how this X-incursion plays out, Marvel’s head of visual development Andy Park has shared some of his concept artwork for The Marvels, which you can find here….