Tom Hardy Reportedly Up for Villain Role in 'X-Men: Apocalypse'

X-Men: Apocalypse will burst into theaters in 2016, and we've already seen a glimpse of the titular villain at a young age in the post-credits scene of X-Men: Days of Future Past. But who will play the villain in the next movie?

The Wrap reports 20^th Century Fox has made Tom Hardy an offer to play Apocalypse in the next film in the franchise. The deal is nowhere close to done, and Hardy has also reportedly received offers from Marvel to star in Doctor Strange and DC for a role in Suicide Squad.

Hardy of course played a famous DC villain when he took on the role of Bane in The Dark Knight Rises.

In other news, writer Simon Kinberg spoke to Collider and discussed how the movie completes the story that began in X-Men: First Class. "I will say that it is definitely the close of a trilogy for those First Class characters, which isn't to say we won't see them in future movies, hopefully we will, but it's a completion of an arc for them," he said.

Beast (Nicholas Hoult) and Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) have had a spark between them in both First Class and Days of Future Past, and Kinberg said that would continue into Apocalypse. He also talked about another key relationship. "I think that the friendship between Erik and Charles, which has always been so integral to the franchise, is something we're continuing to explore and hopefully deepen with Apocalypse. And the relationship between Beast and Mystique is a really interesting one that we didn't have a lot of time to explore in Days of Future Past, so we'll have an opportunity to do more of that."

Next, Kinberg talked about moving the franchise into the 1980s. "We're having a lot of fun with the idea of the 80s," he said. "It's a decade that Bryan [Singer] and I both grew up in and so the music, the style, the aesthetic, the legacy of 80s movies is something we're really having fun with."

Finally, the writer discussed some of the behind-the-scenes components of the movie. "There are some very big set pieces," Kinberg said. " I don't know what the budget's gonna be because we're still a ways away from budgeting the film, but I can say that Fox has a lot of creative confidence in the team that made Days of Future Past-myself, Bryan, Lauren Shuler Donner, Hutch Parker.  All of those people are coming back so in terms of a sandbox they're definitely giving us a lot of room to play creatively and take chances the way that we took some chances on Days of Future Past, and do some radical things just as I think we did some radical things in Days of Future Past."

Would you like to see Hardy play Apocalypse? Let us know in the comments section.