Yesterday I wrote up a discussion piece which went over the large amount of casting confirmations for additional characters in X-Men: First Class over the last few days. At first glance, it appears that there are far too many characters but chances are many of them will have little screen time in the final product. The real concerns however, fall on what story Matthew Vaughn and Bryan Singer will be trying to tell and how all of these characters will fit together within that.

One of the more surprising cast updates from yesterday involved Alice Eve being replaced by Mad Men's January Jones for the key role of Emma Frost which seemed like a done deal.

According to yesterday's report, Eve was in negotiations but hadn't signed yet but there may be more to it than that. Our pal Pietro Filipponi from Comic Book Movie acquired some interesting info from his sources at Marvel who claim that Eve and her reps were able to convince Fox to let her out of her obligations.

Why? According to Pietro, Eve wasn't happy about some of the more recent First Class script changes and it no longer felt right for her to play Emma. It's too bad for fans because she looked perfect for the part but not to worry, January Jones is also a great pick to play the White Queen.

The source also claims that there's no bad blood between Fox and Eve as they're apparently still interested in her for a key role in the Fantastic Four reboot, the next Marvel project on the studio's plate after X-Men: First Class. You can guess which character she may be up for.

If this is factual, what does that say about the state of the movie? We know there's been half a dozen writers do their own rewrites of the script and as recently as a few weeks ago, Matthew Vaughn found himself ripping out a full 12 pages of the script after seeing Inception and realizing there were strong similarities between that film and an action-oriented dream sequence that was previously a part of the X-Men: First Class story.

I'm very curious to see what Singer and Vaughn will bring audiences with their X-Men prequel.

Share your thoughts in the comments and with us on Twitter @rob_keyes and @screenrant.

X-Men: First Class begins shooting in the next few weeks for a June 3, 2011 release.

Source: CBM