‘X-Men’: Kit Connor Reportedly Lands Cyclops Role in Marvel’s Mutant Reboot

Marvel’s casting search for its new team of mutants has been quietly moving at a rapid clip all summer, with fans tracking every rumor and meeting tied to the studio’s upcoming reboot. While James Bond speculation dominated headlines for much of the season, the real casting frenzy has been happening behind closed doors around who will suit up as Marvel’s new X-Men.

That process has already produced two significant names, with Samara Weaving reportedly landing the role of Emma Frost following a series of director and studio meetings over the summer. Now a second major piece of the roster appears to have fallen into place, continuing the studio’s pattern of testing multiple candidates before settling on its final choices.

Marvel Studios has found its Scott Summers for the new ‘X-Men’ film, with Deadline reporting exclusively that Kit Connor is the choice to play the mutant hero known as Cyclops. According to the outlet’s sources, the casting process mirrored the approach used for the Emma Frost role, with director Jake Schreier and Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige meeting with a number of candidates before ultimately landing on Connor last week.

Sources told Deadline that a small group of actors tested for the Cyclops role shortly after the Fourth of July holiday, with the studio going through considerable back and forth before finally settling on Connor to don the character’s signature visor. Marvel and representatives for Connor did not respond to requests for comment on the casting news at the time of the report.

Connor is best known for starring in Netflix’s ‘Heartstopper’, a role that turned him into one of the more recognizable young actors working today. He has continued building out his filmography beyond that breakout part, recently signing on to lead the upcoming murder-mystery thriller ‘One of Us’, which was set to begin filming in Northern Ireland.

The push to rebuild the X-Men within the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been building since Disney’s 2019 acquisition of 20th Century Fox and its film library, which brought characters like Cyclops back under Marvel’s direct control for the first time. The X-Men franchise was widely considered Fox’s most successful and profitable Marvel property, encompassing seven mainline films along with a spinoff Wolverine trilogy that further expanded the mutant corner of the studio’s output.

Momentum around the new project accelerated last spring once Schreier was confirmed to direct, followed shortly after by the hiring of ‘Beef’ creator Lee Sung Jin and ‘The Bear’ co-showrunner Joanna Calo to write the screenplay. That creative team’s involvement has fueled expectations that the new film will lean into more grounded, character-driven storytelling, an approach Schreier has hinted at in prior comments about wanting to preserve the “interpersonal drama” that has always run through X-Men comics alongside their bigger ideological themes.

With Connor now reportedly attached as Cyclops and Weaving previously linked to Emma Frost, Marvel appears to be steadily assembling its new mutant roster piece by piece ahead of an eventual official announcement. No release date for the film has been confirmed, though the studio’s ongoing casting momentum suggests more reveals could be coming soon.

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