Laurence Fishburne Says No To Star Wars But Maybe To X-Men

The Matrix and Apocalypse Now star is open to taking another smooth-domed mentor role if Marvel comes calling.

Legendary actor, raconteur, and man of furious style, Laurence Fishburne, has opened up about the odds of him accepting an offer to join a couple of pop culture’s biggest franchises. Speaking at New York Comic Con this week, the star of Boyz N The Hood and The Matrix says he’s fine being in the audience for the ongoing Star Wars saga, perhaps intuiting that they’ve already hit their quota of regal, bald, black men in robes.

As reported in Deadline, Fishburne quickly shut down the suggestion that he might be a good fit for Star Wars.

“No, I’m good,” he said. “I’m watching everything. I’m watching every Star Wars, I’m in the middle of Rebels now, man. I’m good on the couch with Star Wars. I don’t need a lightsaber.”

However, Fishburne was markedly more enthusiastic about potentially joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe – and he has a role picked out already.

“I know that they’re talking about the X-Men now,” Fishburne said during a panel Q&A. “So, at this point, I want one of two things. The first thing would be: what do you think about Laurence Fishburne as Professor X?”

Well, look, I can see it. But here’s the thing: nobody has the faintest idea about what marvel plan to do with their mutant characters, least of all Marvel.

After decades of being siloed off from the MCU thanks to Fox owning the rights, the X-Men and their associated friends and foes have been gradually making little inroads into the MCU canon – Deadpool And Wolverine is the most prominent example, but Patrick Stewart showed up as Professor X in Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness, and Ms. Marvel is apparently a mutant, which seems to have had little impact on her adventures so far.

We do know that a bunch of Fox X-Men are due to show up for the (wrong-headed, bound to underperform) Avengers: Doomsday, including Stewart, Ian McKellen as Magneto, Alan Cumming as Nightcrawler, Rebecca Romijn as Mystique, and James Marsden as Cyclops). Channing Tatum is in there too as Gambit, but whether he counts as a franchise veteran is up for debate. At a guess, expect a scene or two to wrap up (or kill off) those characters – Doomsday is already overstuffed as it is.

And then there’s the mooted X-Men reboot, which currently has Thunderbolts* director Jake Schreier attached. There’s been no news since that announcement, but I can see Schreier being a good fit. If nothing else, the overwrought psychodrama of Thunderbolts* is a pretty close tonal match for the Chris Claremont era X-Men comics. I’m being a little snarky, largely because I thought Thunderbolts* was a mid marketing exercise disguised as a movie, but I’m also not lying.

How it all shakes out is up for debate, and every fan has their own “if I ran the circus” theory (mine involves time travel!) but, as ever, we’ll have to wait and see.