A new age of the X-Men is coming to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Thunderbolts* director Jake Schreier revealed in a new interview with Empire Magazine that he’s begun working on Marvel’s new X-Men film reboot.
“I can’t say anything about it, but we’ve started work on X-Men, and that’s obviously very, very exciting,” Schreier told the outlet.
No details have been revealed about plot or even which X-Men characters will appear in the new film, which will launch a new chapter for the mutant franchise within the MCU. But the filmmaker revealed that he learned some valuable lessons from helming Marvel’s misfit team-up movie starring Sebastian Stan, Florence Pugh, and David Harbour that will help him direct a new team on X-Men.
“There are so many things that I didn’t know about before I started [Thunderbolts*],” Schreier said. “The biggest learning curve for me was the proportion of the action to the more emotional, character-driven scenes, and how, even though it’s more shooting days than I’ve ever had, they get eaten up quite quickly by the action stuff. By the time we got to the end of it, it felt like, ‘Oh, now I feel like we get how to do this a little bit better’ … These are very special experiences.”
Chuck Zlotnick/Marvel Studios
Schreier’s Thunderbolts* featured the titular dysfunctional team of antiheroes in a big fight against the unstable, Superman-like Sentry/Void a.k.a. “Bob” (Lewis Pullman). But that action-packed conflict further helped tell the main story that centered on mental health and depression as Yelena Belova (Pugh), Bucky Barnes/the Winter Soldier (Stan), U.S. Agent/John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian (Harbour), and Ava Starr/Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) appealed to the villain’s emotions and learned how to battle their own inner demons to form a new team instead, now called the New Avengers.
In July, Marvel boss Kevin Feige confirmed that Schreier will direct Marvel’s X-Men reboot, teasing new castings for the fan-favorite characters.
“Jake’s going to make a youth-focused reboot,” Feige told The Playlist. “That may be reflected in mutant castings, and it’ll definitely be felt in the tone and perspective of the film.”
Schreier told the outlet the film will tackle “inherently interesting and complex material,” adding that “the core idea of what X-Men is involves complexity.”
“It’s an incredible opportunity with super interesting characters and internal conflict,” the filmmaker said. “These characters are wrestling with their identity and place in the world… To be able to explore all of the ideas that are inherent to that rich source material, but also at the scale inherent to the source material, that’s like a very rare and fortunate opportunity. That’s very exciting.”
The new age of X-Men within the MCU is only possible after the Disney and Fox merger in 2019, finally bringing the mutant characters into the onscreen comic book universe.
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Some actors who played X-Men characters in the previous Fox franchise will reprise their roles in Avengers: Doomsday, including James Marsden (Cyclops), Patrick Stewart (Charles Xavier/Professor X), Ian McKellen (Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto), Rebecca Romijn (Mystique), Alan Cumming (Nightcrawler), and Kelsey Grammer (Hank McCoy/Beast). Channing Tatum, who played Gambit in Deadpool & Wolverine, will also finally join the team.
Doomsday arrives in theaters on Dec. 18, 2026, with Secret Wars following a year later on Dec. 17, 2027. Feige previously revealed the MCU will “reset” after Secret Wars, paving the way for the new chapter of X-Men.
