The checkered history of the X-Men franchise under the stewardship of Fox has recently come to an end after almost two decades of wildly hit-and-miss movies, although The New Mutants is still stuck in a state of limbo despite originally shooting over three years ago. It was a wild ride for Charles Xavier’s superhero team that brought a fair share of critical success and billions at the box office, but ended with a thud as Dark Phoenix tanked in the wake of scathing critical reviews.
With the characters now officially under the Marvel Studios banner for the first time ever, it’s only a matter of time before the X-Men are rebooted and parachuted into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. While it isn’t exactly unusual for the mutants to be rebooted given that it seems to happen every few years anyway, Kevin Feige is likely to take his time in developing the project, so it looks like we won’t be seeing them in the MCU at any point in the near future.
Whenever Marvel Studios’ X-Men reboot does get officially announced though, all eyes will no doubt be on Wolverine. Whoever steps into the iconic shoes of Hugh Jackman faces a daunting task, and will be the focus of the most intense scrutiny out of anyone involved.
A whole host of actors have already been linked to the role, but sources close to We Got This Covered – the same ones who revealed that Marvel was developing a She-Hulk show back in April – have told us that the adamantium-infused hero won’t be positioned as the main character of the MCU’s X-Men, with the eventual reboot set to focus on other mutants and with Wolverine in more of a supporting role.
This makes complete sense, as anyone else apart from Hugh Jackman playing Wolverine faces an unenviable task after the Australian actor portrayed the character in nine movies spanning 17 years. The likes of Batman, Superman and Spider-Man may have been recast countless times before, but Jackman is the only big-screen Wolverine we’ve ever had, and it will take a lot to shake that from the public consciousness.
The smartest idea then would be to focus on the rest of the X-Men and leave Wolverine out entirely, because there likely wouldn’t be many people launching angry online petitions slamming the new cinematic version of Cyclops as inferior to the legendary work James Marsden. That being said, we can’t see Marvel ignoring Logan completely, but again, don’t expect him to be the main character in the eventual reboot.