Although the X-Men haven’t had their own movie since Dark Phoenix in 2019, Marvel Studios has reportedly decided on the director it wants to bring the mutant heroes back to the big screen.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Thunderbolts director Jake Schreier is now in negotiations with Marvel to direct the X-Men reboot movie. Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes screenwriter Michael Lesslie is writing the script for that film, which is expected to be a clean break from the 20th Century Fox X-Men movies. Thunderbolts has gotten strong critical reviews, and good word of mouth from audiences since its release on May 2. Marvel is presumably happy with that response or else the studio wouldn’t be fast-tracking Schreier for such a high-profile follow up movie.
The first X-Men film was released in 2000 and it became an unexpected hit that made Hugh Jackman a star and helped usher in the age of superhero movies. Following the 2019 sale of Fox’s entertainment assets to Disney, the rights to all of the X-Men-related characters reverted to Marvel Studios and reunited almost all of the Marvel rights under one roof except for the Spider-Man characters that remain held by Sony.
Last year’s Deadpool & Wolverine was the first live-action Marvel Studios film to feature X-Men-related characters at the forefront, although X-Men characters made cameos in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and The Marvels. Marvel also successfully launched the X-Men ’97 cartoon last year, which is a sequel to the classic X-Men: The Animated Series.
Curiously, a recent report by THR indicated that Ryan Reynolds is exploring a Deadpool and X-Men team-up movie, which is presumably separate from this project. Like Deadpool & Wolverine, that potential film would likely take place outside of the primary MCU timeline.
Additionally, Avengers: Doomsday is slated to feature several actors from the original X-Men films, including Patrick Stewart as Professor X, Ian McKellen as Magneto, Kelsey Grammer as Beast, Alan Cumming as Nightcrawler, Rebecca Romijn as Mystique, James Marsden as Cyclops, and Channing Tatum as Gambit. For now, there’s no word as to whether Jackman will join them as Wolverine in the film when it opens in theaters on May 1, 2026.
