MCU’s X-Men Reboot Gets an Important Production Update: Fan-Favorite Director Landed the Job!

Marvel Studios is officially moving forward with its long-awaited X-Men movie, and now we know who will be leading the project. Jake Schreier, the director behind Thunderbolts*, has been chosen to bring the X-Men into the MCU.

This news was confirmed by Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige during a press roundtable that ComicBook attended while promoting The Fantastic Four: First Steps.

Schreier is no stranger to Marvel fans. He made his MCU debut earlier this year with Thunderbolts*, a film that focused on a group of unlikely heroes coming together.

Feige mentioned that this experience helped Schreier land the job. “It’s official, Jake Schreier is doing X-Men for us, and we’re very, very lucky,” Feige said. “And we’re very, very lucky to have him and very excited to have him. And so we’re beginning. It’s all starting now. The script’s underway.”

Feige explained that the positive response to Thunderbolts played a part in choosing Schreier. But he also said that his confidence in Schreier goes beyond just that one film. “Jake’s an incredibly smart guy, and he’s an incredibly talented filmmaker,” he shared. “We had a great experience with him on Thunderbolts. And if you saw that movie, what he did with those character interactions, he also has his pulse on, shall we say, a younger demographic. He’s younger than me for sure, but he’s tapped into that in a way that I think was important for Thunderbolts, much more important for X-Men. Because X-Men, as it was in the comics, will be a very youth-oriented, focused and cast movie.”

Feige didn’t give any details about the plot of the upcoming film. He admitted that many of the most popular X-Men stories have already been told in past movies. “More than any of them, right? There have been more X-Men movies than there were Spidey movies or Fantastic Four movies,” he said. Still, he didn’t rule out revisiting some of those storylines in new ways. “So a lot has been done. But again, because it’s X-Men, because it’s almost a comic legacy unto itself, there’s so much more to tap into it,”

Feige explained. “And there [are] so many sagas within sagas for X-Men that that’s part of what we’re talking about now — which saga to grow and build to while doing the most important thing, which is introducing all of these characters and giving them their due in our first film.”

Marvel Studios has been thinking about bringing mutants into the MCU for a while. Back in 2019, at San Diego Comic-Con, Feige said that mutants, including the X-Men, would eventually show up in the MCU. He also mentioned that their version of the X-Men would feel different from the earlier films made by 20th Century Fox. The X-Men rights came over to Marvel Studios after Disney merged with Fox in 2019.

In September 2023, reports said Marvel was meeting with writers for the project. By May 2024, Michael Lesslie was in talks to write the script. A year later, he was officially confirmed as the writer.

Meanwhile, Marvel Studios has other X-Men projects in the works. Ryan Reynolds is also working on ideas for a movie that would focus on “three or four” X-Men characters alongside Deadpool.

Reynolds is working separately from Marvel Studios for now to figure out the film’s direction. It was reported that using Deadpool in a supporting role could help introduce the X-Men in new and unexpected ways.

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