Marvel may have found a director for its first X-Men movie.
The existence of the project was first revealed last May. It was reported that Marvel President Kevin Feige was overseeing the studio’s first film based on its long-running X-Men series of comics. (The previous X-Men movie franchise was produced by 20th Century Fox; Disney acquired the rights to make their own X-Men when it acquired the Fox film studio.) At that time, Michael Lesslie, who co-wrote the recent film version of The Hunger Games prequel The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, was brought in to pen the movie’s script.
Now, per The Hollywood Reporter, Marvel is looking to line up a director. And apparently their pick is Jake Schreier, who directed Marvel’s latest movie Thunderbolts*. And, none too coincidentally, Thunderbolts* is not only a solid hit, the movie has received Marvel’s best responses from critics and fans in several years. The movie is also about a team of misfits who must learn to work together to save the world — very similar territory to an X-Men movie.
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What remains unknown is who will appear in this version of X-Men, and whether they will be new actors and new characters, returning veterans from the old Fox X-Men movies, or a combination of the two. Numerous alumni from the Fox franchise — including Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Alan Cumming, Rebecca Romijn, Kelsey Grammer, James Marsden, and Channing Tatum — have already been announced as part of the upcoming Marvel movie Avengers: Doomsday. (The two most notable Fox X-Men, Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool and Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, are not confirmed for the film, at least not publicly.)
That film could conceivably serve as the curtain call for those versions of those characters. It’s also possible that some of them could remain in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and go on to appear in this X-Men movie. (Channing Tatum looks positively determined to turn Gambit into his own franchise, for example.)
The next Marvel Cinematic Universe movie, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, opens in theaters in July.
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Gallery Credit: Emma Stefansky
