In the post-Avengers: Secret Wars MCU, the X-Men will almost certainly be Marvel Studios' biggest priority. Introducing the team in the current franchise is easier said than done, given that the rights to the characters only returned home in 2019.
We've seen the odd mutant like Namor and Ms. Marvel show up, but a softly rebooted MCU will make it much easier to put the X-Men front and centre.
That's going to give us an MCU with the Avengers, X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Spider-Man all existing within the same space. It's an exciting prospect, and one we anticipate being a game-changer for Marvel's Merry Mutants.
While the 20th Century Fox-era X-Men will return in Avengers: Doomsday, work on the reboot is already underway. Thunderbolts* director Jake Schreier is set to helm the movie, while Michael Lesslie, known for The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, was tapped to write the screenplay in 2024.
There have been a few casting rumours, none of which seem to have much merit. The latest comes our way from @MyTimeToShineH, who reports that, "Jacob Elordi is also very high on Marvel's list for an X-Men role."
The actor's star is on the rise. He first rose to prominence after appearing in Netflix's The Kissing Booth and HBO series Euphoria. He later made the leap to the big screen with acclaimed roles in Priscilla and Saltburn. More recently, Elordi has starred in Wuthering Heights and Frankenstein, with the latter earning him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
At 28, he's not necessarily too old to play a member of the X-Men, but Mister Sinister would be an even more intriguing role for the actor. This X-Men rumour has surfaced following some bogus claims about Elordi being cast as the next James Bond.
There's no truth to those, which shouldn't come as a huge surprise, seeing as Elordi is Australian; Amazon MGM Studios will no doubt be looking to cast a British actor as the next 007 in Denis Villeneuve's take on the Bond franchise.
"There've been more X-Men movies than there were Spidey movies or Fantastic Four movies, so a lot has been done," Feige previously said. "But again, because it's because it's almost a comic legacy onto itself, there's so much more to tap into it and there's so many sagas within sagas for X-Men that that's part of what we're talking about now is which saga to grow and build to while doing the most important thing, which is introducing all of these characters and giving them their due in our first film."
"I'm not going to speak to the makeup of the characters that will be in the first movie, but look at Galactus, look at Gambit in Deadpool & Wolverine, look at Wolverine in Deadpool & Wolverine," he continued. "We want to embrace that which was not embraced 25 years ago when I was around on those early X-Men movies, which is those comic-accurate looks."
Who do you think Elordi could play in Marvel Studios' X-Men reboot?