It seems Marvel Studios is finally starting to make some progress on the long-awaited X-Men reboot.
Following a recent rumor claiming that Stranger Things alum Sadie Sink is the studio's top choice to play Jean Grey, we have some updates courtesy of The Hot Mic's Jeff Sneider and scooper Daniel Richtman.
Whether Sink ultimately winds up being cast as Jean or not, Marvel is said to be looking for actors in the same age range (early to mid-20s) to play our new team of mutant heroes. This was to be expected, although there had been rumors that the plan was to go even younger (late teens).
Richtman reports that a director is currently being sought (though he doesn't mention any potential candidates), and the movie will be set after the events of Avengers: Secret Wars. He also reiterates that the plan is for Deadpool and Wolverine star Hugh Jackman to "stick around after Secret Wars and do more stuff with Deadpool."
We assume this means Jackman will be re-teaming with Ryan Reynolds for a fourth Deadpool movie, but where would that leave Logan when it comes to the X-Men reboot? We've heard that another actor won't actually be cast as a new take on Wolverine (at least not initially), and the character simply won't be a part of the team. If accurate, this would allow Jackman to make a few more appearances as the fan-favorite berserker while giving Marvel time to think about replacing him once he does hang up the claws for good.
If some of the X-Men make their debut in the next Avengers movies (which they are rumored to do), there's a chance we could get some official casting news fairly soon.
During a recent interview with Discussing Film, Kevin Feige was asked how it feels knowing that "we’re closer to seeing the X-Men and Avengers together on the big screen."
"It is extremely emotional, on a personal level, to have done a movie with Hugh after 25 years and me being a small part of that first X-Men movie. And knowing that, thanks to various corporate studio entity deals, we now have 1000s of characters back — characters I hadn’t frankly thought about in many years because we didn’t have the rights to them. Now that we do, it is great fun thinking [about who we can finally]. Our animated series X-Men ’97 was sort of the first taste of people reuniting with the X-Men mythology and that storyline. The response to that series just further excited us about how to bring the soap opera and the saga of the mutants to the MCU."
Michael Lesslie has been enlisted to pen the script.