Although Marvel Studios' long-awaited X-Men reboot is slowly but surely starting to come together, we still know very little about which storylines the movie will follow and the characters that will make up the new team.
We do know that Thunderbolts* director Jake Schreier will take the helm, and the filmmaker recently revealed that Sonny Lee Sung Jin (Beef) and Joanna Calo (The Bear) had come aboard to write a new draft of Michael Lesslie's script.
Now, Schreier has revealed which Marvel Comics X-Men run will (at least partially) inspire the MCU reboot.
"They have come in and are working on a draft right now, which is really, really exciting to be able to put that group of people together again," he tells Collider: "I also think just having the time to kind of sit back, and I’ve just been digging into so many of the old comics and the entire Claremont run, and just going through stuff and really trying to think about what can we do well that feels new and feels different, and that hasn’t been done well before? Obviously, there’s such an incredible cinematic tradition of these comics, but what can we do? And how can we put our own spin on what that is?”
Claremont's work on the X-Men covers a lot of ground (over 20 years in total), and some of his most iconic storylines - The Dark Phoenix Saga and Days of Future Past, for example - have already been adapted (however loosely) for the big screen. Assuming Schreier and co. have no interest in rehashing anything from the 20th Century Fox era, there's still plenty to mine from the likes of Inferno, God Loves, Man Kills, The Brood Saga, and Mutant Massacre.
In a separate interview with MovieWeb.com, the director reiterated that they are setting out to do something with the mutant heroes that has not been covered in the Fox films.
Collider also caught up with Sung Jin, who remained tight-lipped about what the creative team has planned - though he did reveal that he's a huge fan of one character in particular.
“Oh man, I don’t know what I’m allowed to say. Where’s my publicist? I know that there was a previous draft, but I also know that Joanna [Calo], Jake [Schreier], and Steven, the producer, and Kevin [Feige], and Lou [D'Esposito], we’ve been meeting regularly to try and create a new draft. I love working with these people, these frequent collaborators, and so I think the goal for us is to just keep getting in rooms and keep spit balling.”
"I have such fond memories of me and my dad," he added. "Saturday morning, every morning, waking up, I think it was 9:00 or 10:00 a.m. central time, and we’d watch every single episode, read the comics, and I was a huge Gambit fan growing up, so the love is very strong.”
Channing Tatum will reprise his Deadpool and Wolverine role as Gambit for Avengers: Doomsday, and rumor has it that he will also be a part of the reboot's roster.
Though nothing has been officially announced, the belief is that X-Men is scheduled to hit theaters on May 5, 2028.