This deserves its own write-up.
The biggest surprise, so far, from the “Avengers: Doomsday” casting announcements — which is still ongoing — was the return of some old-school “X-Men” stars. We’re not exactly sure what the plan is for these characters, and whether they will just be one-off appearances, but they certainly make for buzzy casting.
The mutant cast in ‘Doomsday’ includes Patrick Stewart (Charles Xavier) — who was killed off in both “Logan” and “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” but appears to be back. Will he be killed off for a third time?
Ian McKellen, who was last seen as Magneto in “X-Men: Days of Future Past,” will be returning as well. He’s supposed to also supposed to be back as Gandalf in Andy Serkis’ upcoming “Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum.” McKellen, who was recently injured falling off a stage during a London performance, is 85 years old.
Kelsey Grammer will also reprise his X-Men role as Beast. Grammer’s character has appeared in “X-Men: The Last Stand (2006),” “X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014),” and made a cameo in the post-credits scene of “The Marvels.”
The rest of the returnees include Alan Cumming as Nightcrawler — a highlight from “X2”; James Marsden as Cyclops; Channing Tatum, who played Gambit in “Deadpool & Wolverine”; and Rebecca Romijn, as Mystique.
Where’s Hugh Jackman? Maybe he’ll cameo, but he wasn’t announced today.
Last year, Marvel boss Kevin Feige stated that the “Mutant era” was soon coming in the MCU, which meant we were going to be getting the X-Men reboot that’s long been awaited by fans.
There is still no director attached to Marvel’s “X-Men” reboot. More recently, ‘Hunger Games’ writer Michael Lesslie was hired to pen the screenplay. There were brief rumors that Jordan Peele (“Get Out”) met with Marvel boss Kevin Feige to potentially direct, but nothing materialized out of that meeting.
There have been a lot of bad ‘X-Men’ movies: “X-Men: The Last Stand” (‘06), “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” (‘09), “X-Men: Apocalypse” (‘16), “Dark Phoenix” (‘19), “The New Mutants” (‘20) … Fox has been milking this franchise for a few decades now. In March 2019, Marvel Studios got back the film rights to X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Deadpool after Disney acquired Fox for $71.3 billion.
As far as the consensus goes, there have been five good X-Men movies released in the last 25 years: “X-Men” ‘(00), “X2” (‘02), “X-Men: First Class” (‘11), “X-Men: Days of Future Past” (‘14) and “Logan” (‘17) — otherwise, this franchise had its day, which is why Feige believes it’s a good idea to reboot the entire thing. But before he does that, he’s going to be bringing the old gang back for one last hurrah in ‘Doomsday.’
The ‘Smile’ franchise has a new director. David Bruckner, who made “The Night House” and the 2022 “Hellraiser” reboot, has been hired to direct “Smile 3” for Paramount.