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Fox and Marvel have announced they will be spinning off an X-Men character into his own movie. Not Wolverine, however, which is still listed as in development, but telepathic metal manipulator Magneto:

[Ian] McKellen's participation in "Magneto" will likely be limited, since the film is an origin story. In a storyline hinted at by the original "X-Men" films, Magneto comes to grips with his mutant ability to manipulate metal objects as he and his parents try to survive in Auschwitz. Magneto meets Professor Xavier (played as the wheelchair-bound mutant leader by Patrick Stewart) when Xavier is a soldier liberating the concentration camp.

Magneto hones his powers by hunting down and killing Nazi war criminals that tortured him, and his lust for vengeance turns Xavier and Magneto into enemies. Both characters will be played by actors in their 20s.

Director David Goyer has his work cut out for him, as the margin of discretionary error tends to widen when one segues from tales about bat-suited vigilantes to a mutant coming-of-age story set inside history's most efficient death factory. Still, the subject matter seems far richer than your average "fell into a tank of toxic sludge at the Ace card factory" supervillain origin, and we for one are looking forward to witnessing our unlikely hero, equal parts Simon Wiesenthal and Uri Geller, carving up the bad guys using nothing more than some intense concentration and his former SS tormentors' own Nazi uniform belt buckles.