A tweet just flittered across my screen from the guys over at Flickchart, who are claiming that director Bryan Singer has confirmed that he will be directing X-Men: First Class.

As shocking as this may be for many of you, I know one guy who has been calling this for sometime - our very own Rob Keyes!

I'm not going to delay - here are the tweets as sent by the guys over at Flickchart - apparently the announcement from Singer "was streamed live to 80,000+ people on Ustream/MySpace..." And yet, somehow I managed to miss it...

Shout out to our friends at First Showing for helping to alert us to the news:

Bryan Singer just leaked that he's directing the next X-men Origins film on the AVATAR "blue carpet". What do you think about that?

Yep. "X-Men First Class" will be an "Origins" film. He said he just sealed the deal with the studio.

You can read the tweets at their source by going HERE and HERE.

Wow, Bryan Singer returning to the X-Men franchise... And handling X-Men: First Class, to boot. When First Class was first announced, I immediately saw the potential in telling the story of how the X-Men came to be. With Singer at the helm, that potential will certainly be realized.

X-Men: First Class getting the Twilight treatment

The question now is: which mutants will be enrolled in X-Men's First Class?

IMO, Singer's strength was always that he knew how to tell the human story of the mutant characters; the first hour of X-Men is still my favorite part of the franchise. It was whenever the super hero action came into play that I thought Singer was just a tad bit (tiny bit) lacking. The fact that X-Men: First Class is an origin movie works to his credit: origin movies tend to have much more story than action.

I for one am happy about all this - how are you feeling?

We'll keep you updated as this breaking story develops.

No word yet on when X-Men: First Class would go into production.

Sources: Flickchart & First Showing