Disney's acquisition of 21st Century Fox was completed in 2019, and comic book fans have been waiting to see the X-Men in the MCU ever since.
There have been occasional references to mutants (Ms. Marvel and Namor, for example), and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, The Marvels, and Deadpool & Wolverine hinted at what might be to come. In those, Marvel Studios put its own, comic book-inspired spin on characters like Professor X, Beast, and Gambit.
Many of the original big screen X-Men will appear in Avengers: Doomsday, but looking beyond that, a full-blown X-Men reboot is in the works and likely to kick off the next Saga of storytelling.
Talking to select press at a roundtable last week, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige confirmed that the biggest way the MCU's X-Men will differ from what we've seen in the past is by embracing the comics in a way filmmaker Bryan Singer never did.
"There've been more X-Men movies than there were Spidey movies or Fantastic Four movies, so a lot has been done," Feige explained. "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."
We're already expecting the original X-Men to don comic-accurate costumes in Avengers: Doomsday, and can surely expect the eventual reboot to take that to the next level, exploring these characters in a way the previous movies never did. That should mean we get to see them battle more than just Magneto, a villain who was centre stage in every single movie.
As we first told you yesterday evening, Thunderbolts* director Jake Schreier is officially directing X-Men for Marvel Studios. Asked what makes the filmmaker right for the project, Feige indicated that we're getting a more youthful take on the mutant superhero team.
"Jake’s an incredibly smart guy, and he’s an incredibly talented filmmaker. We had a great experience with him on Thunderbolts*, 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," Feige shared. "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."
Marvel Studios' X-Men reboot doesn't have a confirmed release date but is expected to arrive in theatres in 2028.