Director Bryan Singer surprised us all last week when he announced that the next “X-Men” movie, titled X-Men: Apocalypse, would be hitting theaters in 2016. Since then, there’s been a flurry of rumors about how the film connects to the upcoming “Days of Future Past,” what characters will be appearing, and who will be Apocalypse. Those all remain conjecture, except for the “Apocalypse is not an alien” debunking that Singer tweeted earlier this week. The lack of information about the sequel isn’t just limited to the fan community either, as actor James McAvoy says he found out about the project along with everyone else.

“I only heard about it this morning!” McAvoy said in an interview with Red Carpet News TV (via CBM), and though he didn’t confirm a return for “Apocalypse,” he did mention he is contracted for a third appearance as Charles Xavier.

McAvoy also spoke about the upcoming X-Men: Days of Future Past, calling it “The biggest X-Men film yet, without a doubt.”

“The personal pleasure for me in ‘First Class’ was presenting a Charles Xavier to the fans, but also a new audience, who’s very different from the Charles that you expected. But he was still very sort of ‘Everything’s going good!’ In the second movie I get to present another version of Charles Xavier who’s still very different from the Charles that used to exist, but he’s also remarkably different from the Charles in ‘First Class’ as well. So what’s great is that even though it’s a sequel, even though it’s a franchise, I keep getting to reinvent Charles Xavier and that’s amazing. I’ve got to do it twice now, because the Charles in this film is unrecognizable from the Charles in the last film as well unrecognizable from the Charles played by Patrick Stewart, who I then get to face up to. That’s sort of theatrical almost, it’s like we’re playing a game with the audience saying ‘Look at the many faces of Charles-Patrick-Stewart-Xavier-McAvoy. It’s really good fun.”

Hitting theaters on May 23, 2014, the anticipated film stars Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Hugh Jackman, Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence, Halley Berry, Nicholas Hoult, Anna Paquin, Ellen Page, Shawn Ashmore, Peter Dinklage, Omar Sy, Daniel Cudmore, Fan Bingbing, Boo Boo Stewart, Adan Canto, Evan Peters, Josh Helman and Lucas Till.