Jennifer Lawrence, Kevin Bacon in "X-Men: First Class"

The cast for Matthew Vaughn’s X-Men: First Class re-boot is rounding into shape as the studio announced today that Jennifer Lawrence will be playing Mystique and Kevin Bacon will portray the film’s chief villain.

Lawrence, who is currently starring in Winter’s Bone, will play the blue mutant shapeshifter, who was portrayed by Rebecca Romijn in the first three X-Men films.

Fox has not released any information about the character that Kevin Bacon will play, though Variety is reporting than fan speculation is centering on Mister Sinister as the villain for the origin story that stars James MacAvoy as the young Charles Xavier and Michael Fassbender as the youthful Erik Lensherr (Magneto).

Professor X Cast

Casting has begun for the upcoming X-Men film directed by Matthew Vaughn. James McAvoy has been cast as the young Charles Xavier, according to Variety.

Production is expected to begin this summer for the film, which will premiere in 2011.

Bryan Singer on 'X-men: First Class"

Bryan Singer has signed to direct X-Men: First Class for Fox, returning to the franchise he started by directing X-Men and X2, according to the Heat Vision blog. The characters will be younger than in the other movies, and the movie will tell the story of Xavier and Magneto’s first meeting and the founding of the Xavier Institute.

A new writer, Jamie Moss, has been hired to produce a script. Josh Schwartz did an earlier version.