'Game of Thrones' star Peter Dinklage joins 'X-Men: Days of Future Past'

From Entertainment Weekly:

A superhero always pays his debts.

Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage is joining the cast of X-Men: Days of Future Past.

Director Bryan Singer tweeted the news tonight, although he did not specify which character the actor would play.

While we’re of the mind that the charismatic 43-year-old could play any badass he put his mind to, there are a few Marvel mutant characters that would match his diminutive height.

One would be Puck, a strapping adventurer who found his physical stature shrunk by mystical forces — making him smaller, but no less of a forceful fighter.

But it’s unclear whether the character, which was part of Marvel’s Alpha Flight series (which started in 1983) would be covered by 20th Century Fox’s license to make movies based on the X-Men comics. Puck is technically an “altered human,” and he did have various adventures alongside the X-Men team, so it very well could count. We won’t know for sure until Singer reveals more.

Marvel sold film rights to Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, and X-Men, among others, before Marvel Studios began making its own movies, such as the interlocked Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and Avengers titles, so it’s always a question of which character can be used by whom. For instance, Marvel Studios can’t use any of its comic book mutant characters in its own films, since those all fall under the X-Men deal with Fox.

The reverse goes for MODOK, another smallish Marvel character whose size belies his chaos-causing prowess as a villain. He would fall under the Marvel Studios/Disney banner, and be unavailable to the Fox X-Men series.

But such speculation sells Dinklage, well, short.

This star of The Station Agent and Game of Thrones has personality that transcends his height, and could being energy and charm to just about character — good, evil, or in-between — that Singer hands him.

Days of Future Past, which is set to debut in July 2014, will also feature Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart as older versions of Magneto and Prof. X, while X-Men: First Class prequel stars Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy will reprise the younger versions of those characters, with Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult and, Wolverine himself, Hugh Jackman also set to return.