X-Men First Class Movie - X-Men Prequel

20th Century Fox announced that Gossip Girl creator Josh Schwartz was hired to pen the script of a new X-Men movie titled X-Men First Class. But till recently we didn't know if Fox intends to make a spin-off X-Men movie (that would focus on a new generation of X-Men) or a prequel.

Well now we got a confirmation that the movie X-Men First Class will actually be a prequel to the X-Men movie series. X-Men franchise producer Lauren Shuler Donner revealed indeed on Fox Movie Channel’s Life After Film School that the plot of X-Men First Class will focus on the first class of Xavier's Institute for Higher Learning.

"So it’s young Scott, young Jean, young Beast and that’ll be really fun. I think the plan is to follow some of the characters into their own stories, and weave them back into the X-Men world. And hopefully First Class will become its own franchise and we can follow them as they grow up."

X-Men franchise producer Lauren Shuler Donner

Besides the upcoming Wolverine movie is setting up the premise of X-Men First Class: Professor Charles Xavier is indeed briefly seen at the end of the movie, he comes with an helicopter to rescue the young mutants freed from Stryker's progam by Wolverine. And Cyclops is even among those young mutants:

I doubt that First Class could bring anything really new though... And aside from Professor Xavier I don't see any character among the young team whose story would be really worth developing. They will probably highlight Cyclops' story... But he is such a boring character...

No word about the cast of X-men First Class but I bet Patrick Stewart will reprise his role as Professor Charles Xavier.

IMDb is listing X-Men First Class for a release in 2010, but such an early release seems unlikely, 2011 seems more reasonable.

Anyway I'm impatient to see how the movie X-Men First Class will turn out!
;-)