Marvel’s X-Men Movie May Have Found Its Director
From the misfits to the mutants.
Thunderbolts*, (or, depending on what poster you’re looking at, The New Avengers) is the movie that convinced skeptics the Marvel Cinematic Universe still has the juice to create super-squad movies without characters who have been there from the very beginning. With a cerebral story, interesting characters, and grounded performances, it really seems like the MCU’s new hope.
Apparently, this wasn’t just the reaction from fans: Marvel itself has noticed the film’s success too, and it may just reveal the director of one of the franchise’s most anticipated upcoming releases.
Jake Schreier may direct another super-squad Marvel movie.
Deadline reports that Thunderbolts director Jake Schreier is currently being eyed to direct Marvel’s upcoming X-Men film, the natural next step for the mutants after planned upcoming appearances in Deadpool & Wolverine and Avengers: Doomsday. Michael Lesslie, the writer behind fellow franchise revitalizer The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, is penning the script.
Marvel rewarding the creative minds behind its biggest success with more projects is a longstanding tradition. The Russo Brothers got their start as the directors of the Captain America sequels before they were given Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, and just last year Marvel announced they would direct the next two Avengers movies, Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars. Even Marvel’s next scheduled movie, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, is from a repeat director: Matt Shakman directed the acclaimed Disney+ series WandaVision previously.
Marvel has proven that bringing back proven directors creates successful stories.
We don’t know much about the X-Men movie, as it’s not slated for release until after Secret Wars, but Marvel repeating the proven tactic of repeating directors is a sign that this isn’t going to be a risky movie for the franchise. Schreier is now a proven talent, and has shown he can work within the MCU constraints and, crucially, craft stories around characters with existing legacies.
In a way, the Thunderbolts and the X-Men are incredibly similar: powerful misfits trying to do something good even thought their pasts are (usually) full of trauma. In 2024, Kevin Feige told io9 that one of the things he was excited to bring into the MCU was the “soap opera nature” of the original X-Men stories. If that’s what this movie will dwell on, then Schreier is absolutely the man for the job: he created an entire Marvel movie where the villain was just a giant symbol for depression.
