Spider-Man: Brand New Day is now playing in theaters, and for the most part, the rumours heading into the movie were largely accurate. However, we didn't get the older female villain who was said to be a lock for the project, and new details about that character have been revealed on The Hot Mic.
According to John Rocha, The Odyssey star Anne Hathaway was approached to play the MCU's Leper Queen in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Ultimately, she decided the role was too small, and the character was changed, becoming Tramell Tillman's Bill Metzger.
In the comics, the Leper Queen was a normal woman whose unborn child was "infected" by a passing mutant. At the age of two, the child manifested pyrokinetic mutant abilities and burned down her house, killing herself and scarring her mother. With that, the woman—known only as "Page"—swears revenge against all mutants.
The idea was likely to reimagine her as the head of the Department of Damage Control, and similar to Metzger, leave the door open to Hathaway's villain returning in the upcoming X-Men reboot.
Elsewhere in the podcast, Rocha said he's heard that Cooper Hoffman is playing Cyclops, with Adam Driver cast as X-Men's main villain, Charles Melton as Beast, Cailee Spaeny as Rogue, and either Bill Skarsgård or Tom Pelphrey as Professor X.
However, his co-host, Jeff Sneider, disputed Hoffman playing Scott Summers by revealing that he's heard Drew Starkey is in the mix for Cyclops. The actor, best known for his roles in Love, Simon, The Hate U Give, Outer Banks, and Queer, certainly looks the part, though he'd arguably make a good Warren Worthington III/Angel, too.
With D23 fast approaching, chances are we'll learn who will lead the X-Men cast in Anaheim between August 14 and 16. However, based on yesterday's Emma Frost news, the trade could share some news before the event takes place.
Last year, we asked Schreier how Thunderbolts* had prepared him for the X-Men reboot. "I loved working on it," he told us. "And I loved working with everyone at Marvel. I think that the lesson of the movie is also the lesson in making the movie, which is that you cannot, and I mean, it's kind of obvious making it, that you cannot do it alone. I think that Thunderbolts* is the product of just a massive amount of work."
"Jon Watts was my roommate in college, and I used to go see the Spider-Man movies and be like, 'God. That just seems like so much work. There must be some way where it doesn't feel that way,' and it's like, 'No, it's just a massive amount of work by a ton of people who care deeply,' and I think that I would not have gotten through this without so many [of them]."
"If you can learn to work within that environment and really harness the kind of energy that those people bring, then there's an opportunity to really tell interesting stories and take things to places that are unexpected, and try to make something special," Schreier concluded.
Marvel Studios' X-Men reboot is expected to be released in 2028.