Oscar Isaac, the actor who rose to prominence after strong showings in Drive and Inside Llewyn Davis, will play the primary villain in Bryan Singer's X-Men: Apocalypse - the next instalment in Fox's long-running Marvel Comics franchise.

Oscar IsaacOscar Isaac has been cast as the villain in X-Men: Apocalpyse. He looks like a villain. So that's good.

Given the May 27, 2016 release date, the casting now means Isaac will appear in two blockbuster franchises in quick succession. He is due to appear in J.J Abrams hugely anticipated Star Wars: The Force Awakens - the first trailer for which hits this Friday (November 28, 2014).

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X-Men: Apocalypse will see the mutants to face off against the titular villain on the 90's storyline, Age of Apocalypse. 

"It's another one of the great 'X-Men' storylines, which is cool," writer and producer Simon Kinberg said in an interview with Hero Complex. "Not all superhero movies, comic book movies, will follow storylines from the books, and one of the things we've been doing with the 'X-Men' movies recently is taking books as inspiration and following those stories."

Bryan SingerBryan Singer is helming the new X-Men movie

"One of the challenges of following up 'Days of Future Past' is that the movie is so big in scale and scope and stakes, how do you tell the next one that doesn't feel like a step backward? The 'Apocalypse' story, even for people that don't know the comics, just from the title the stakes are pretty clear."

Fox has made a commitment to numerous comic book movies, including two new Fantastic Four movies and another standalone Wolverine film, with Hugh Jackman. There's also a solo 'Deadpool' movie set for February 12, 2016.

More: X-Men: Apocalypse coming in 2016 - and you know what that means

"Visually it takes us into some places we've never explored in the 'X-Men' movies," Kinberg added of his vision for the new films. "I love when other superhero or comic book movies have yet another genre [within the genre] - like 'Captain America: The Winter Soldier' being like a political thriller and 'Days of Future Past' being a science-fiction time-travel movie, those are subgenres. With 'Apocalypse' we're really doing a global-disaster movie, Roland Emmerich-style."