Caleb Landry Jones on Top of the List to Play Banshee in X-MEN: FIRST CLASS
Our friends at Latino Review are reporting that Caleb Landry Jones is the top contender to land the role of Banshee in Matthew Vaughn's directed X-Men: First Class.
Who the hell is Caleb Landry Jones you ask? He played the kid on the bike at the end of No Country For Old Men. No? Doesn't ring a bell? He also was in Friday Night Lights and co-stars in the upcoming film The Last Exorcism. He's not a very big star, X-Men: First Class will definitely be the biggest movie he's done if he ends up actually getting the role. In case you don't know Banshee can produce a sonic scream for various effects, hover or fly at the speed of sound, overwhelm listeners with deafening noise, generate sonic blasts which struck with tremendous concussive force.
Here's a background description of the Banshee character.
Ireland's storied Cassidy clan is an ancient and noble lineage steeped in heroism, secrets, adventure, feuds and tragedy, all of which Sean Cassidy would inherit in some measure. The family's ancestral home is Cassidy Keep, a fortress-like castle in a remote, sparsely populated coastal area of County Mayo, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean from high atop the granite cliff Cassidy Crag. The Cassidy presence there predates historical records, and Cassidy Keep itself was built by Liam Cassidy over a thousand years ago to defend the Irish coast against Viking raiders. The Keep also covertly sheltered the "Families" (diminutive enchanted leprechauns or elves). In recent decades, the castle's Seneschal (steward), Eamon O'Donnell, has served as both caretaker of Cassidy Keep and guardian of the "Families". Born and raised in Cassidy Keep, Sean Cassidy had a happy boyhood there, fantasizing about fighting dragons and rescuing damsels. During adolescence, Sean discovered his mutant sonic powers but concealed them - partly because his wail spooked the superstitious elders of the community, who likened it to the ghostly banshees of Irish lore.
Banshee soon teamed with Jubilee, Emma Frost and a reluctant Sabretooth to rescue a group of mutant teens from the extraterrestrial Phalanx. One of the teens, Blink, sacrificed herself to make the victory possible. The survivors, Jubilee and various other young mutants all enrolled in Xavier's new youth education program at the Massachusetts Academy, with Sean and a newly reformed Emma as co-headmasters. Cassidy and Frost worked together uneasily at first, and experienced several severe fallings-out, but gradually forged a mutually respectful working relationship and a strong bond with their students, Generation X. This alcoholic downslide, combined with Emma's wavering morality, funding troubles, and other factors, led to the disbanding of the Generation X program.
Sean had barely begun to heal, both emotionally and physically, when he uncovered vital information regarding the recent disappearance of Charles Xavier. Unwilling to entrust this information to electronic communication, he flew back to America via commercial aircraft, but the X-Men's mysterious new foe Vulcan seized control of the X-Men's Blackbird jet and set it on a collision course with Sean's plane. Healed enough to fly short distances under his own power, Banshee exited the plane and could have flown to safety, but instead tried to save his fellow passengers by sonically deflecting the Blackbird. However, the injured Banshee lacked the power to accomplish this feat, and was caught between the two planes in a fiery mid-air explosion, sacrificing himself to protect innocent human lives.