Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellen. Photo / Getty Images
Everyone's favourite besties - Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen - won't reprise their mutant roles in the upcoming X-Men: Apocalypse.
Stewart confirmed the news in an interview with Larry King, according to Yahoo! Movies.
"I was learning quite a lot more about it last night, and it is going to be looking very much at the earlier lives of all our characters," Stewart said.
"And so I don't think we'll be making an appearance."
Patrick Stewart as Professor X.
Stewart plays telepath Professor X in the franchise, while McKellen is the metal-controlling Magneto.
Onscreen, they're not always on the same side, but offscreen, the pair are close friends - they delighted fans last year by taking cute tourist photographs around New York City as they neared the end of their run on a Broadway show.
In X-Men: Apocalypse, Professor X and Magneto will be played by James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender, who starred as the younger versions of the mutants in X-Men: First Class and in X-Men: Days of Future Past (which thanks to a time-travelling storyline also starred Stewart and McKellen).
It doesn't mean Stewart and McKellen, who were in the first three X-Men films, won't ever return.
With Channing Tatum set to star in a Gambit spin-off, Ryan Reynolds finally getting his Deadpool spin-off, and the added potential of more X-Men sequels, we could see the first generation mutants back on the screen in the future.
- AAP
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