Kevin Feige assured fans that an X-Men reboot was in the works shortly after Disney acquired 20th Century Fox's assets back in 2019, and we've only recently begun to get some official updates on the project.
Michael Lesslie is set to pen the script, and while a director has yet to be announced, the studio is believed to have begun meeting with filmmakers and development is expected to kick into a higher gear in early 2025.
For now, all we have are rumors - but if these latest claims from Daniel Richtman prove to be accurate, fans might be very surprised by Marvel's plans for the mutant heroes and, more specifically, Wolverine.
Possible spoilers ahead.
According to the scooper, the MCU X-Men reboot will not feature Wolverine at all, and the team will be "similar" to the X-Men '97 animated series with some other characters added to the mix. Apparently, Logan will not be on the roster because Hugh Jackman will be stocking around for quite a while - possibly even post Avengers: Secret Wars.
Jackman staying on as the iconic clawed mutant is not that surprising after the massive success of Deadpool and Wolverine, but not including Logan in the rebooted team is a choice that might not sit very well with fans. Though comic book readers will likely see this as the right move (they've wanted more focus on the other characters for years), Wolvie is (clearly) still a huge draw for general audiences.
During a recent interview with Discussing Film, 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."
The Cosmic Circus' Alex Perez believes that the groundwork will be laid for an eventual Avengers vs. X-Men project in the upcoming reboot and Avengers movies, but we won't actually see both super-teams clash on screen for quite a while.
What do you make of these latest rumors? Do you think introducing the X-Men to the MCU without Wolverine is a smart move? Let us know in the comments section.