Patrick Stewart is making the press rounds for “Picard,” his hotly anticipated new CBS All Access series premiering later this week that sees him reprising his iconic role from “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” so it’s not a huge shock that reporters are asking about whether or not he’d return to his other famous franchise role, that of Professor X in the “X-Men” franchise. This is an especially intriguing possibility given the character’s new home as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe stable of characters (following Fox’s sale to Disney). As it turns out, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige did reach out but for now at least, Stewart is good.
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While speaking to Digital Spy, Stewart said, “I met with Kevin Feige a couple of months ago and we had long, long conversations. And there have been moves and suggestions, which include Charles Xavier.” It’s heartening to hear that Feige is already diligently working on bringing the mutants into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and that he’s willing to incorporate previous iterations of the characters from the confounding Fox version of the franchise. (It also makes us wonder who else Feige has reached out to.) But sadly, it doesn’t seem like Stewart is ready to get back in the game.
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“Here’s the problem… If we had not made ‘Logan,’ then yes, I would probably be ready to get into that wheelchair one more time and be Charles Xavier,” Stewart told the outlet. “But ‘Logan’ changed all that.” Stewart then shared an anecdote about how the first time he saw the film was at the premiere at the Berlin Film Festival and for the very end he and Hugh Jackman were holding hands and sobbing. “”We were moved by the story. We were moved by one another. We were moved by the movie. But we also both made the decision that we were saying goodbye to our characters as well,” Stewart said, forgetting, perhaps, that “Logan” was the second time his character had died in the “X-Men” movies (the first time was in the miserable “X-Men: The Last Stand”). But who knows. Did anyone really think he’d play Picard again? Exactly.