By all accounts, Mr. Sinister will be the big bad of Marvel Studios' long-awaited X-Men reboot, but the powerful geneticist may not be the only villain our team of mutant heroes are set to face-off against.
Alex Perez dropped a few X-Men related tidbits in his latest Q&A, and he believes Sinister, aka Dr. Nathaniel Essex, will be joined by Senator Kelly and Bolivar Trask as "the first antagonist elements they’d want to use for the first X-Men film."
With Sinister and (possibly) the Sentinels involved, it's not entirely surprising that Trask and Kelly would also factor into the story, but we can see some fans being a little disappointed if Marvel does decide to revisit these characters after they both appeared in 20th Century Studios' X-Men franchise. That said, those movies really only scratched the surface of what these ruthless humans are capable of, and their introduction could pave the way for some major comic book storylines.
Quite a few of the OG X-Men are set to return for Avengers: Doomsday, and Perez sounds certain that they won't be the only ones. Though we're not sure if all of these characters will appear, Storm, Jean Grey, Wolverine, Deadpool, X-23 and Colossus seem likely.
We recently got word that Thunderbolts* director Jake Schreier is in line to helm the reboot, though this has yet to be made official.
Casting is not yet underway (as far as we know), but the likes of Harris Dickinson, Margaret Qualley, and Julia Butters are said to be on the studio's radar (they were reportedly in contention to play Cyclops, Rogue and Kitty Pryde, but we don't know if this is still the case), along with Alien: Romulus star David Jonsson and Trinity Bliss, who may be in line to play Jubilee.
Other names that have popped up in the rumor mill include Hunter Schafer (Mystique), Ayo Edebiri (Storm) and Javier Bardem (Mr. Sinister).
Here's what Kevin Feige had to say about his "10-year plan" for the Mutant Saga in a recent interview.
"I think you will see that continues in our next few movies with some X-Men players that you might recognize. Right after that, the whole story of Secret Wars really leads us into a new age of mutants and of the X-Men. Again, [it’s] one of those dreams come true. We finally have the X-Men back."
Macbeth (2015), The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023) and Assassin's Creed (2016) scribe Michael Lesslie penned the script, but we wouldn't be surprised if another writer (or two) were brought in to give it another pass before the movie enters production.
No release date has been set.