Patrick Stewart And Ian McKellen Are Teaming Up Again?
Patrick Stewart hints that he and Ian McKellen have a new project on the way.
Patrick Stewart may be done with Jean-Luc Picard after the final season of Star Trek: Picard comes out, but he’s “not done” with his old friend Ian McKellen. In a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight, Stewart not only hinted that he and his old X-Men co-star are gearing up for a new collaboration, but that McKellen had expressed his willingness to return to the role of Magneto. Could that mean the pair are coming back for their signature Marvel roles, perhaps in Deadpool 3?
Patrick Stewart was doing promotion for Star Trek: Picard when the subject came up of Ian McKellen’s reaction to his friend’s cameo in last year’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness:
“Actually, it went very well. He did say something like [‘Hey, I would’ve done this!’], yes that’s true. But we’re not done, Sir Ian and myself. We’re… we got plans.”
-Patrick Stewart
Over the course of 15 years, Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen appeared together in five of Fox’s X-Men films, beginning with the game-changing X-Men in 2000, and ending with 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past. It was through working on the first X-Men film that the pair became good friends, and they went on to forge one of the most beloved bromances of any fandom, ever. If Stewart’s hint has something to do with the two of them reprising the roles of Professor X and Magneto, fans everywhere are sure to burst with glee.
But it may be assuming a little bit too much to think that Stewart’s reference to their “plans” is necessarily a Marvel-related venture. Both Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen are lovers of the stage and their friendship has led to multiple stage collaborations; most memorably in the two-man Samuel Beckett play Waiting for Godot. There’s no reason to dismiss the notion that something like this — or perhaps a screen project completely unrelated to Marvel or the X-Men — could be what Stewart is referring to.
Still, if there is one reason to keep hope alive that Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen could be appearing in Deadpool 3, there’s the fact that Stewart has admitted he’s spoken to Marvel about the possibility. GIANT FREAKIN ROBOT scooped the news that Stewart was in talks for the movie last September, and the Picard star confirmed that he’d “been told to stand by” just last week. So if Stewart is definitely waiting to hear about Deadpool 3, and if McKellen has supposedly expressed interest in returning, then a meeting between them and Wade Wilson seems pretty possible, if not likely.
Regardless, whatever plans Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen have, we’ll be overjoyed to eventually learn exactly what they are. The pair could do a Marvel movie, a Star Trek series, or read from grocery lists next to a dumpster in an alleyway and it would be worth checking out.
