Even though we’ve already seen a dozen X-Men movies that included sequels, reboots, sequels to reboots and spinoffs, the fact that the characters are now under the ownership of Marvel Studios means that fans won’t mind seeing yet another big screen reinvention for the mutants in the slightest.
Fox’s time at the helm of the franchise came to a pretty ignominious end with Dark Phoenix being savaged by critics and becoming the biggest box office bomb of last year, while The New Mutants is still in cinematic purgatory having recently been given its fifth different release date, and nobody would be surprised if the long-delayed spinoff ended up getting moved again.
Despite such a turbulent end to the original series, the prospect of both a clean slate and the crossover potential that comes with having the X-Men under the same roof as the Avengers means that the MCU’s rebooted version of the team are virtually guaranteed success, and Kevin Feige is no doubt already starting to fit some of the pieces together behind the scenes.
While a return for Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine now seems out of the question, many of the other major roles will be viewed as some of the most coveted in the industry, and a new rumor has once again linked Breaking Bad and The Mandalorian’s Giancarlo Esposito with inheriting the mantle of Charles Xavier from Patrick Stewart and James McAvoy, something we first heard about months ago.
It was recently reported that the actor was said to be in talks with Marvel over an undisclosed part in the long-running superhero franchise, and all signs seem to point towards it being Professor X. A lot of people seem to like the idea of him playing the DCEU’s Mr. Freeze, but Esposito has proven himself to be a hugely versatile actor, and he’d no doubt be able to put a fresh spin on the X-Men’s bald-headed patriarch in order to avoid any obvious similarities with Stewart or McAvoy’s more kindly and benevolent take on the character.
