An “X-Men” movie at Marvel Studios looks to finally be picking up steam, and Jake Schreier, the director of one of the best-reviewed MCU movies in years “Thunderbolts*,” is in early talks to direct the film, IndieWire has confirmed.
Michael Lesslie, who wrote “The Hunger Games: Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” wrote the script for the still-untitled “X-Men” movie. Kevin Feige, per usual, is producing.
Marvel declined to comment.
Since acquiring Fox back in 2017, Marvel has been building slowly towards bringing the X-Men back into the fold of the MCU. They’ve teased mutants in “Ms. Marvel,” and they had a post-credits sequence that teased the “X-Men” at the end of “The Marvels.” After bringing Hugh Jackman back as Wolverine for “Deadpool & Wolverine” last year, Marvel recently announced that the new “Avengers: Doomsday” film would include many of the stars from the original series of “X-Men” films that began way back in 2000, including Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, James McAvoy, Alan Cummings, Rebecca Romjin, and even Channing Tatum reprising his role as Gambit from “Deadpool & Wolverine.”
It’s unclear what a new “X-Men” movie would focus on or which characters it would bring back, as well as if we’d see an entirely new cast of characters taking on the legacy characters such as Charles Xavier, Magneto, Cyclops, Storm, Wolverine, Rogue, Jean Grey, and the rest. The 13 different X-Men films to date have grossed a combined $6 billion globally.
“Thunderbolts” after just one weekend in theaters has already grossed $173 million globally against a $180 million budget, and the reviews for the film are some of the best an MCU movie has seen in the post-“Endgame” era.
Schreier is also the director of Netflix’s “Beef” and has some indie roots with films like “Robot & Frank” and “Paper Towns” from early in his career.
Next up for the MCU is another reboot of some characters that pre-dated the MCU, “The Fantastic Four: First Steps,” which opens in July.
Deadline first reported the news.
