As I blogged the other day, talking to a cow-orker in the know, Kelsey Grammar will be playing Beast in the upcoming X-men 3 movie.

My cow-orker is pretty excited about it as he thinks it’s the perfect role. I can see it – he has the speech mannerisms down to play a smart scientist. He and I share the same concerns about Bret Ratner directing though.

Jeffrey Wells’ Hollywood Elsewhere column had a brief mention of Ratner taking over in his “Wired” blog like piece on the front page, seperate from the stories he writes, that’s pretty harsh as well:

06/ 9/2005 5:53 AM

The fanboy community freaked last week when 20th Century Fox announced their decision to hire Breet Ratner to direct X-Men 3. Ratner will of course degrade the franchise. Not in any thuddingly obvious way but in a hundred little ways. One of these is his decision to add more laughs. “Not jokes for the sake of jokes,” Ratner said in a recent interview, but “jokes that come from character humor, that come from characters and that come from the situations.” This sounds to me like a guy saying he doesn’t entirely get (much less get off on) the X-Men mythology or metaphor, and that he’s a tiny bit bored by it so why not throw in some more gags? As Red Dragon was to Silence of the Lambs, X-Men 3…we know how this sentence ends, dont we? X-Men 3 will begin shooting in Vancouver in mid-August.