Marvel’s plan to reboot the X-Men franchise will see the iconic superhero team reborn with a “very youth-orientated” take, featuring a young cast.
That’s according to Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige, who has already begun discussing the project — despite it likely not arriving until at least 2028, after the December 2027 launch of Avengers: Secret Wars.
Still, early work on the project is now very much underway. The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes screenwriter Michael Lesslie has been developing the reboot’s script, while Thunderbolts*/The New Avengers director Jake Schreier was recently confirmed to be helming the project. And now, we’ve heard more from both Feige and Schreier on what to expect.
“We had a great experience with [Schreier] on Thunderbolts,” Feige recently told Nerdist, “and if you saw that movie, what he did with those character interactions — he also has his pulse on, shall we say, a younger demographic.
“Not — he’s younger than me, for sure — but he’s tapped into that in a way that I think is important. It was important for Thunderbolts, much more important for X-Men, because X-Men, as it was in the comics, will be a very youth-oriented, focused and cast movie.”
Speaking to ThePlaylist, Schreier agreed it was fair to assume Marvel’s new take on the X-Men would be recognizably different to that seen in the previous X-Men films made by 20th Century Fox — which went on to offer its own version of a younger reboot via its First Class series of prequels.
“Yeah, I think that’s fair to say,” Schreier acknowleged. “There’s that red sniper dot out there somewhere, you know… but to be able to explore all of the ideas that are inherent to that rich source material, but also at the scale inherent to the source material, that’s like a very rare and fortunate opportunity.”
It’s already been six years since the last X-Men film hit theaters — 2019’s critical and commercial flop Dark Phoenix — and it will likely be several more before Marvel’s new X-Men line-up make their debut. Could we see them introduced earlier than expected via some multiversal shenanigans in Avengers: Secret Wars? It’s possible.
Before then, we know that the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday will meanwhile bring back much of Fox’s original X-Men cast, including Patrick Stewart (again) as Professor Xavier, Ian McKellen as Magneto, Famke Jansen as Jean Grey and James Marsden as Cyclops. Another appearance by Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine also seems assured, considering the huge financial success of 2024’s Deadpool & Wolverine.
“Obviously [X-Men] is an ensemble film and, inherently whatever it ends up being, is going to deal with complicated characters,” Schreier conluded, speaking to Nerdist. “I just really love what I do and especially these days, it’s not to be taken for granted to get the opportunity to do it. And to get to work on things at a scale that really still challenges you.”
Marvel recently confirmed that Avengers: Secret Wars would act as something of a “reset” for the MCU (don’t call it a reboot), allowing its universe to feature fresh versions of classic characters — such as the X-Men — interacting with the surviving members of its main cast.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
