Bryan Singer is no stranger to using social media to make announcements about the casting of his X-Men films. He was all over the likes of Twitter and Instagram for Days Of Future Past and the pattern is repeating itself for X-Men: Apocalypse. The director hit Instagram to announce that Olivia Munn will play Psylocke in the new film.
[Excited to welcome @oliviamunn as Betsy Braddock! #Psylocke #XmenApocalypse #XMEN](https://instagram.com/p/1bYchvxD_p/)
A photo posted by Bryan Singer (@bryanjaysinger) on Apr 13, 2015 at 1:04pm PDT
Also known as Elizabeth “Betsy” Braddock, Psylocke in the comics is the child of James Braddock Sr., who came from the alternate dimension Otherworld and fathered three kids. Elizabeth suffered an early trauma when she was blinded and nearly killed by a villain, before being given artificial eyes. Her powers include telekinesis, particularly focusing that energy into a “psychic knife” to use on adversaries, plus impressive martial arts skills. How much of her Marvel backstory will be filtered into the movie is something that we’ll have to wait and see.
Her casting comes just a few days after Empire** exclusively revealed that Ben Hardy is playing Angel in the film, which sees the X-Men taking on the incredibly powerful mutant Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac).
X-Men: Apocalypse, which reunites the First Class/Days Of Future Past gang of James McAvoy’s Professor X, Michael Fassbender’s Magneto, Jennifer Lawrence’s Mystique and Nicholas Hoult’s Beast, along with newcomers Munn, Hardy, Isaac, Tye Sheridan as Cyclops, Sophie Turner as Jean Grey, Alexandra Shipp as Storm, Kodi Smit-McPhee as Nightcrawler and Lana Condor as Jubilee, opens on May 19 next year.
And for more world exclusive concept art and insight into the movie from Singer and writer/producer Simon Kinberg, pick up the next issue of Empire when it hits newsstands on April 30.