Thunderbolts* struggled to find an audience when it opened in theaters this past May, but it's still been widely hailed as one of the best MCU movies. With that in mind, it's easy to understand why the news that filmmaker Jake Schreier will helm Marvel Studios' X-Men reboot has been so positively received.
We're not expecting to see the next X-Men movie in theaters until 2028 at the soonest, with it likely ushering in a new era of storytelling for the MCU, post-Avengers: Secret Wars.
Talking to Empire Online, Schreier confirmed that he's officially begun working on the reboot. "I can’t say anything about it, but we’ve started work on X-Men, and that’s obviously very, very exciting," he revealed.
"There are so many things that I didn’t know about before I started [Thunderbolts*]," he filmmaker added, explaining now his previous experience in the MCU will benefit the long-awaited debut of the mutant team in the franchise that began in 2008 with Iron Man.
Schreier continued, "The biggest learning curve for me was the proportion of the action to the more emotional, character-driven scenes, and how, even though it’s more shooting days than I’ve ever had, they get eaten up quite quickly by the action stuff. By the time we got to the end of it, it felt like, 'Oh, now I feel like we get how to do this a little bit better.'"
This comes after he said the "core idea" of X-Men is "complexity," describing the movie as "an incredible opportunity with super interesting characters and [much] internal conflict. These characters are wrestling with their identity and place in the world—that’s inherently interesting and complex material."
In a bid to address superhero fatigue and lower box office totals, we recently learned that Marvel Studios is taking a different approach to its movies, moving forward. That extends to the upcoming X-Men reboot.
As of late last month, it was said that the studio is "fine-tuning" Michael Lesslie's script, and while casting will begin soon, Marvel has indicated to reps that it's looking for talent rather than A-Listers to "keep the cost down."
Before Marvel Studios reboots the X-Men, the team will return in Avengers: Doomsday, with actors from 20th Century Fox's X-Men franchise reprising their roles for the first time in the MCU.
Sir Ian McKellen is confirmed to return as Magneto in Avengers: Doomsday alongside Sir Patrick Stewart as Professor X. They'll be joined by Alan Cumming (Nightcrawler), Rebecca Romijn (Mystique), James Marsden (Cyclops), Kelsey Grammer (Beast), and Channing Tatum (Gambit), though that X-Men team feels far from complete.
You can learn what Schreir told us about how Thunderbolts* prepared him for X-Men by clicking here (or by watching the video below).