After years of wondering what Marvel Studios had in store for the Children of the Atom, the X-Men reboot is finally starting to take shape, with Thunderbolts* director Jake Schreier set to helm and writers Sonny Lee Sung Jin (Beef) and Joanna Calo (The Bear) currently working on a new draft of Michael Lesslie's script.
More recently, the main cast of the long-awaited movie was announced at D23, with Sadie Sink set to reprise her Spider-Man: Brand New Day role as Jean Grey, alongside Inde Navarrette as Rogue, Kit Connor as Cyclops, Christopher Abbott as Professor Charles Xavier, Samara Weaving as Emma Frost, Maya Boyd as Storm, and Adam Driver as Nathan Milbury/Mr. Sinister.
We'd later learn that Gen V and Scream 7 star Asa Germann will play Angel. Beast and Ice-Man are also expected to round out the original team of five from the comics.
Charles Melton (Beef Season 2) was said to be in the running to play the former before a scheduling issue forced him to drop out, and Knight Edge Media is now reporting that A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms star Peter Claffey has landed the role of the MCU's Hank McCoy.
Claffey, an Irish actor and former Connacht Rugby player, made his stage debut at Dublin's Abbey Theatre in A Whistle in the Dark by Tom Murphy. He went on to appear in 2022's Bad Sisters and Wreck, and has a role lined up opposite Cillian Murphy in Small Things Like These.
We'll obviously have to treat this as a rumor for now, but the source has been building a solid track record over the last few months. If Claffey's casting is accurate, we expect the trades to confirm shortly.
Last we heard, X-Men was expected to enter pre-production in Q4 of this year. This always seemed a little ambitious, and Deadline is now reporting that cameras won't start rolling until early 2027.
According to a recent rumor via Daniel Richtman, the studio is "still looking to cast a few more roles, including a female role that will have a small part in the first film and a larger role in the sequel, a male POC role who would be either Native American or Latino (they haven’t decided yet) in a supporting role, and an Asian female supporting role."
There are several characters that could fit the bill here, but if Marvel does go with a Native American hero, it will most likely be Forge, Thunderbird, or Warpath. Sunspot is the most prominent Latino male mutant in the comics, but there's also the likes of Empath and El Águila.
As for the Asian female, we'd guess either Psylocke or Jubilee. Of course, we are assuming these characters will be X-Men - there's always a chance they'll be villainous mutants or humans.
We should be getting more official casting news fairly soon, so be sure to keep an eye on CBM for updates.
Kevin Feige teased Marvel's plans for the X-Men shortly after SDCC.
"Acquiring the X-Men rights isn't just about... for example, Wolverine is an outstanding character, and we were able to team him up with Deadpool, which is great. But the X-Men are far more than just Wolverine, far more than the original team; fundamentally, it's a universe, a multi-stage saga. Much of that is what we're working towards."
"We’re constantly changing, constantly evolving, but having some guidance helps us act more purposefully, especially with X-Men—it’s already had 10 movies, some very, very good, some I think haven’t lived up to expectations—how do we plan the 'mutant saga' in a very grand way?"
"That being said, we have many more characters to explore in the future—the schedule is already booked until 2042, especially the X-Men," Feige added. "The X-Men have many unexplored characters from the Asia-Pacific region, particularly China, which we're very eager to explore. That's why I'm excited about the X-Men: we can show the world different types of heroes."