The Marvel Cinematic Universe X-Men reboot movie officially has as director. The news dropped as a footnote in a larger focus piece on the upcoming Marvel Studios release slate, which now includes four film releases set for the year 2028. That’s going to arguably be the most pivotal year in the history of the MCU, as Avengers: Secret Wars is expected to soft-reboot the entire franchise in late 2027, making 2028, ostensibly, the soft relaunch of a whole new MCU franchise. Phase Seven will be the place where the Marvel movie diaspora finally consolidates into one shared universe, where Sony’s Spider-Man universe and Fox’s former Fantastic Four and X-Men franchises finally co-exist alongside the Avengers universe Marvel Studios built. Every Marvel character is finally playing in the same franchise sandbox.
Videos by ComicBook.com
X-Men is going to be the biggest make-or-break release of that initial Phase Seven release slate – perhaps the final hope for Marvel Studios to score a billion-dollar and/or franchise-starter blockbuster hit. And, as earlier reports speculated, Marvel is trusting none other than Thunderbolts* director Jake Schrier with MCU X-Men movie’s director’s chair.
Is Jake Schreier The Right Director for X-Men?
Jake Schreier really scored his breakout hit directing and executive producing Netflix’s dark horse hit new series, Beef. That show’s method of blending seemingly disparate genres (drama, action, even some select horror-thriller vibes and gore), in order to achieve deep, probing character studies, was something novel and dynamic for viewers to experience. All box office debates aside, Thunderbolts* was also (at the very least) a novel and dynamic MCU character study, which once again showed that Schreier can string together seemingly contradictory genres (superhero fantasy, action, psychological horror, thrillers, drama) and bake them into a weird-but-wonderful viewing experience. “Weird but wonderful” should practically be the tagline for what this MCU X-Men movie hopes to be.
It must be noted that Jake Schreier’s success with both Beef and Thunderbolts wasn’t achieved alone; he’s been on a strong creative stride alongside Joanna Calo, who is the showrunner of FX-Hulu’s Emmy-winning hit The Bear, as well as one of the creative talents involved with Netflix’s BoJack Horseman and HBO Max’s Emmy-winning hit Hacks. There’s no word on whether or not Calo will partner with Schreier on the MCU X-Men movie, but given the strength of virtually all of her character-driven TV series, we have to hope she’s along for this X-Men project.
The X-Men ’97 animated series was a test run for how a new generation of MCU fans responds to X-Men content. Fans who were raised on Avengers movies and only knew the X-Men from the Fox movies were somewhat surprised by the level of messy drama and socio-political insights that come with X-Men stories. It gave both fans and Marvel Studios a much-needed taste test, which Schreier can now build on. If he can wrangle a bunch of D-list characters and create Thunderbolts*, he can certainly work with Cyclops, Jean Grey, Wovlerine, Gambit, Rogue, and the rest.
As of now, the MCU X-Men Reboot is expected to be released in 2028.
Source: Variety
