We’re still over a month away from the release of X-Men: Days of Future Past, but attention is already starting to turn towards 20th Century Fox’s next mutant superhero offering X-Men: Apocalypse, with director Bryan Singer and writer-producer Simon Kinberg taking the opportunity to discuss their adaptation of the classic X-Men tale Age of Apocalypse during an interview with Entertainment Weekly.

“[X-Men: Days of Future Past] won’t necessarily create an alternate universe, but there may be some swapping things that I’m playing with,” states Singer, who is directing his third X-Men movie with this year’s sequel. “You won’t feel at the end of the movie that it set up Apocalypse. What it does is it sets up possibilities. But what we’ll discover in Apocalypse is that events in this movie made that happen. Apocalypse deals with ancient mutancy. What would humans have thought mutants were? What would mutants think humans were? You’re dealing with gods and things like that. And what if one survived and what if that found its way into our world?”

Singer went on to reveal that James McAvoy (Professor Xavier), Michael Fassbender (Magneto), Jennifer Lawrence (Mystique) and Nicholas Hoult (Beast) are all contractually obligated to return (and Hugh Jackman is bound to be in there somewhere, surely?), while he also name dropped Gambit and Nightcrawler as possible additions: “I’m excited because I want to start introducing familiar characters at different ages and also explore the ‘80s.”

As it happens, that’s the second time that Singer has mentioned Gambit and Nightcrawler for Apocalypse, so I guess that means they’re going to be back. Of course, it remains to be seen whether Taylor Kitsch will reprise his role as the Cajun card-thrower from X-Men Origins: Wolverine, while Alan Cumming will presumably be too old for a return as a younger version of Nightcrawler.

And finally, Kinberg (who is also serving as writer and producer on The Fantastic Four) added that we should expect to see some large scale destruction when X-Men: Apocalypse arrives in 2016: “From a visual standpoint it actually may be a bigger movie than Days of Future Past because there’ll be disaster movie imagery, like the title would imply.”

Before we get to Apocalypse, there’s the small matter of X-Men: Days of Future Past, which opens on May 22nd with McAvoy, Fassbender, Lawrence, Hoult and Jackman joined in the cast by X-veterans Patrick Stewart (Professor X), Ian McKellen (Magneto), Lucas Till (Havok), Halle Berry (Storm), Anna Paquin (Rogue), Ellen Page (Kitty Pryde), Shawn Ashmore (Iceman) and Daniel Cudmore (Colossus) alongside franchise newcomers Evan Peters (American Horror Story) as Quicksilver, Booboo Stewart (The Twilight Saga: Eclipse) as Warpath, Omar Sy (The Intouchables) as Bishop, Fan Binbing (Iron Man 3) as Blink, Adan Canto (The Following) as Sunspot, Evan Jonigkeit (The Following) as Toad, Josh Helman (Mad Max: Fury Road) as William Stryker and Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones) as Bolivar Trask. Watch the latest trailer here.