Alan Cumming will seemingly have no trouble slipping back into character as Nightcrawler for Avengers: Doomsday.
Following Marvel Studios‘ five-plus hour Doomsday cast live stream reveal, Cumming confirmed his return as the teleporting mutant Nightcrawler with a humorous post on Instagram. “Never say never!” Cumming captioned the Instagram post, which includes a video of him showing off his Nightcrawler skills.
X-Men fans can watch Cumming’s Instagram video below:
Cumming’s “Never say never” caption is likely a reference to the actor having previously stated that he would not return as Nightcrawler due to the arduous makeup process required to bring the character to life on the big screen. Cumming had previously turned down a small role in 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand due to not wanting to sit in the makeup chair for four hours every day of shooting.
When did Alan Cumming last play Nightcrawler?
However, with The Marvels (2023) bringing back Kelsey Grammer’s Beast as a fully CG character, Marvel Studios might do the same, at least partially, for Cumming’s Nightcrawler. The first and only time fans saw Cumming as the mutant superhero was in the well-received 2003 X-Men movie X2. While Nightcrawler did appear in a few of the X-Men prequel movies, he was portrayed by Kodi Smit-McPhee instead of Cumming.
Avengers: Doomsday is set to bring back several cast members from 20th Century Fox’s X-Men movies. Besides Grammer and Cumming, the superhero crossover movie will feature Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Rebecca Romign, and James Marsden, who are expected to be playing variants of Professor X, Magneto, Mystique, and Cyclops, respectively, in Doomsday.
While not part of the original X-Men trilogy cast, Channing Tatum is also returning for Doomsday as the mutant hero Gambit. The actor first played the role in 2024’s Deadpool & Wolverine after having previously been attached to a Gambit solo movie that never materialized under the old 20th Century Fox regime.
Avengers: Doomsday is scheduled to hit theaters on May 1, 2026, as part of Phase 6 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
