Just before Deadpool & Wolverine hits theaters and gives the 20th Century Fox era of the X-Men franchise one final bow, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige is already teasing what the roster for the team might look like in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Work on an X-Men reboot is already underway with Michael Lesslie, the screenwriter of The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Marvel Studios have given the X-Men a big push in 2024, not only with the release of Deadpool & Wolverine but with the release of X-Men ’97, which has gotten fans even more excited for their eventual MCU reveal.
Kevin Feige spoke with Gizmodo about what fans can expect from the X-Men in the MCU. He teased how the roster will be a mix of fan favorites but also that we should expect to see some lesser-known characters or heroes who haven’t been given the same spotlight on the big screen. He also said the melodrama of the X-Men comics and X-Men ’97 that fans love so much is a big part of their MCU film plans and is helping shape who is on the team.
“Well, it’s that phrase we use often at Marvel, which is, ‘It’s an embarrassment of riches,’ and there are a lot of great X-Men characters in the
Deadpool & Wolverine
film. There are a lot of great X-Men characters in all of the Fox versions of the
X-Men
films. And there are a lot of great X-Men characters that have never gone on the big screen.“So I think as we always try to do, as we did when we made the arrangement with Sony for
Spider-Man
, you’ll probably see a mix of characters you’ve seen before and characters you’ve never seen before. I think the success of
X-Men ’97
was really exciting for us to see people revisit and reconnect with that world and dare I say, the soap opera elements of that world, which is one of the things that’s so exciting to us about jumping into it finally in the MCU.”
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X-Men Roster Options
We have already speculated on 20 different characters who would be a great fit for the MCU’s X-Men team, which features plenty of iconic members but also put the spotlight on some heroes that have not been featured in live-action yet, like Dust or Armor. The film could draw heavily from Grant Morrison’s New X-Men run, which saw the complicated, tangled romance of Wolverine/Jean Grey/Cyclops/Emma Frost. Those four and their various relationships with one another would make for a great team dynamic. So, too, would other romantic pairings like Colossus and Shadowcat or Rogue and Gambit. Rogue and her adopted brother Nightcrawler also bring a family dynamic, as would Colossus’s sister Magik.
There is also a question of whether Marvel Studios will want to prioritize mutants who might have gotten less exposure in the 20th Century Fox X-Men movies. When the MCU Spider-Man movies started, they specifically wanted villains that had not been done on film before, like Vulture, Shocker, Mysterio, and the Tinkerer. Given that Beast, Cyclops, Storm, Jean Grey, and especially Wolverine have gotten multiple films, the studio might want to emphasize Angel, Psylocke, or Jubilee for the MCU reboot.
There are also plenty of mutants that we said would likely be too weird for the MCU films but could shake up the formula. If Marvel Studios can make Groot and Rocket Raccoon work, they could make audiences fall in love with Maggot or No-Girl. With San Diego Comic-Con so close, rumors are high that Kevin Feige will announce what precisely the studio has planned for the MCU’s X-Men. While it might be too early to announce a cast, there is certainly a possibility that Marvel Studios could announce the X-Men team lineup as they did for the Guardians of the Galaxy back in 2012.
