When Disney finally got the movie rights back to various Marvel characters in 2017 after the company’s deal to acquire 20th Century Fox, many fans thought that X-Men would be first on the list of things to get a reboot. Fast forward to 2022 – and an X-Men movie has yet to be announced. Some thought that an update would come during this year’s San Diego Comic Con or D23 – but it never happened. Although there is no release date for Marvel’s upcoming X-Men movie, we do have new plot details.
Our sources have told us that Marvel Studios’ current plan is for the MCU’s X-Men film to be based on Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men run. Astonishing X-Men was a comic book series continuation of Grant Morrison’s New X-Men. Whedon’s run began in 2004 and ended in 2008.
It’s unclear which X-Men team the studio plans on using – but it’s worth noting that the lineup in that series was Cyclops and Emma Frost (team leaders) and also included Beast, Kitty Pryde, Wolverine and Colossus. That group was also featured in various limited series’ including World War Hulk: X-Men.
Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men run featured four different story arcs in Gifted, Dangerous, Torn, and Unstoppable. A summarized version of the overall plot is that the team must stop an alien race from destroying Earth – while also dealing with the announcement of a mutant cure and various other problems that come about along the way.
Joss Whedon directed The Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron in 2012 and 2015 but has since been at the center of controversy, so a return seems unlikely at this point.
One recent rumor suggested that Marvel can only use Fox’s previous X-Men actors to portray their characters until 2025, which would definitely be a reason that they haven’t made any announcements yet – and would also be the reason that we saw Patrick Stewart make a cameo as Charles Xavier in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
The apparent contract issue hasn’t stopped Marvel from making X-Men references in their Disney Plus shows, though, as we’ve seen Easter eggs appear in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and She-Hulk – and Ms. Marvel revealed Kamala Khan as the MCU’s first mutant.
As far as more developments on the X-Men and everything Marvel Cinematic Universe related – we’ll be sure to keep you posted on any details as soon as we get them.