Sir Patrick Stewart has confirmed he will not be a part of X-Men: Apocalypse – and neither will Sir Ian McKellen.

The actor played Professor Xavier in the original trilogy of superhero films as well as in recent instalment X-Men: Days Of Future Past, but he told Larry King Now that fans wouldn’t see him the next time the franchise hits the big screen.

He added: “Nor Sir Ian McKellen, either. I learned quite a lot more about it last night and it…it is…looking very much at the earlier lives of all our characters, so I don’t think we’ll be making an appearance.”

Sir Ian McKellen Sir Patrick Stewart
Sir Ian and Sir Patrick won’t be back this time (Ian West/PA)

The upcoming film is set to focus on the X-Men’s younger days when they first discovered their powers and formed a group, as a prequel to the original trilogy.

X-Men: Days Of Future Past used time travel to introduce James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender as younger versions of Xavier and Magneto (McKellen), as well as featuring a cast of the X-Men’s younger selves including Jennifer Lawrence and Nicholas Hoult, who were seen in X-Men: First Class.

Sir Patrick Stewart
(Ian West/PA)

Producer Simon Kinberg previously told Yahoo! Movies: “If we included some of the original X-Men, like Storm and Jean and Scott and others in Apocalypse, yeah, we would have to recast them because Apocalypse takes place a good 20 years before X1 (the first X-Men film from 2000).”

Other original X-Men stars included Halle Berry, James Marsden, Famke Janssen and Hugh Jackman.