Christopher Abbott played a version of The Foreigner in 2024's Kraven the Hunter, one of the comic book movie genre's biggest critical and commercial flops.
No one came out of the failed blockbuster looking particularly good, and Abbott's villain had some pretty poorly defined hypnotic powers. While he got off lightly compared to Alessandro Nivola's Rhino, it was still a movie that any actor would be eager to move on from.
Now, Abbott has reflected on his Kraven the Hunter experience—the movie grossed $61.9 million worldwide and has 15% on Rotten Tomatoes—and it sounds as bad as you'd expect.
"[Director J. C. Chandor] owes me big time. I feel like I can I can safely... I can sh*t talk myself. I didn't know what I was doing in that," Abbott tells Josh Horowitz in the video below. "I didn't understand what the power was, what the superpower was. I didn't know what was going on."
"I was like, 'What?' And like I was like, 'So, I take off my glasses and what happens.' And like no one I feel like no one really had a good answer. Can someone give me an answer?" he continued. "I don't know what I was wearing in that thing. I've sort of buried that deep. I love Aaron. Alessandro is a good buddy of mine. I like the people. They're all great in the movie. I don't know what I'm doing in that thing."
Asked if he realised the movie wasn't working, Abbott said that the fact things were going wrong first occurred to him while he was shooting. "In the moment, I was like, 'I don't think this is going well.'
Despite that, the Wolf Man star has no regrets. "J. C. asked me to do it, and I had never done a movie like that. I want to see how the gears turn on a project like that. I want to see how this works. It was interesting."
Fortunately for the actor, he'll get the opportunity to redeem himself in the MCU with the upcoming X-Men reboot. Abbott will play Professor X, a role that will likely keep him in this franchise world for many years to come.
After guaranteeing that X-Men will be better than Kraven the Hunter, Abbott reflected on the process of being cast. "I think [Jake Schreier] had been a fan of mine. I read something on Zoom first, and then I had to go in and test for it. I obviously know of X-Men. I've been a fan of X-Men."
"We read from, I don't know if they were necessarily like dummy sides, but they were very human. The fun part for me is the journey of figuring out how I'm going to do it. A true acting challenge. I have some ideas for the approach. I've been very interested lately in just broadly the idea of consciousness. I'm not saying I'm going to do method acting here and try to be psychic by the time I do this movie."
Directed by Jake Schreier (Thunderbolts*), the untitled X-Men movie stars Kit Connor (Heartstopper) as Scott Summers, Sadie Sink (Spider-Man: Brand New Day) as Jean Grey, Inde Navarrette (Obsession) as Rogue, Asa Germann (Gen V) as Angel, Maya Boyd (& Juliet) as Storm, and Christopher Abbott (Catch-22) as Professor Charles Xavier.
Samara Weaving (Ready or Not) also stars as Emma Frost, alongside Adam Driver (Star Wars: The Force Awakens), who plays Nathaniel Milbury, an alias of Mister Sinister in the comics. There are also rumours that Marvel Studios will introduce Apocalypse as the next Saga's big bad.
X-Men will be released exclusively in theaters May 5, 2028.