Alexandra Shipp made her debut as Storm in X-Men: Apocalypse, before returning as the weather-manipulating mutant hero in what would turn out to be the final X-Men movie of the 20th Century Fox era before the Disney/Marvel takeover, Dark Phoenix.
Shipp did a pretty good job with what she had to work with, which, by the actress' own admission, wasn't very much.
“I would and I wouldn’t," Shipp replied when asked if she'd like to play Storm again in a 2019 interview. "Because Storm barely has anything to say as it is. I don’t know about [the other actors] but like we never talk. So it would be really nice if we weren’t piled into yet another jam-packed cast, in which you only see me in the back of the shot like f*cking sasquatch.”
The Barbie star was asked if her stance had changed at all last year.
"Not interested. I think there are other women who can take on that role and really kill it."
Honestly, it was always highly unlikely that Shipp would be asked to reprise the role for the MCU X-Men reboot, which recently enlisted Thunderbolts* director Jake Schreier to helm. Casting has only just got underway, but there have been persistent rumors that the studio is interested in Wicked star Cynthia Erivo for the part.
Whoever ends up taking over as our next big-screen Storm, Shipp has now shared some sound advice.
“You have to make it your own," she said during an interview with Collider. “I think a lot of the time, people want to compare performances. They want to compare how Halle did her Storm, to my Storm, or any other character, really. I don’t think that is fair to the actor, and I don’t think that’s fair to the audience. I think it’s making that role your own, finding ways in which you can be an individual, and allowing that to form. Because my Storm much younger, and not trained,” she continued. “So she was coming from the streets in [X-Men] Apocalypse. So for me, I really wanted her to be a street fighter, and we brought a lot of that into her fight style and the way that she flew. So I would just say, make it your own.”
Shipp was also asked which comic book iteration of Ororo or storyline she would most like to see explored the MCU movie.
“I would love to see Storm after her and T’Challa [Black Panther],” she revealed. “I want to see that part of Storm’s backstory brought into the through line, into her story at that moment. Because that Storm, that African goddess, we’ve never seen before.”
Schreier has proven that he can deliver on a story featuring a team of misfit characters (Thunderbolts* may have underperformed at the box office, but it was well-received by fans and critics), but he still seems to be a somewhat divisive choice for this project.
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.