UMMARY

Deadpool & Wolverine marks the MCU’s first X-Men movie with stars from Fox, anticipating a new era.
Michael Lesslie’s work on The Hunger Games could lead to a strong focus on female X-Men for the reboot.
Fox’s X-Men movies failed iconic female characters, setting the stage for Marvel to redeem them.

Almost 25 years after the team’s cinematic debut, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has just had its first major update on the X-Men movie reboot, and the reveal is perfect to fix a negative trend of the live-action franchise. Fox’s first movie for the team of mutants was 2000’s X-Men. After that, the studio would play around with the timeline of the X-Men movies, releasing films in multiple different continuities. Those included a Wolverine trilogy and two Deadpool films, which will both come together in the MCU as one of the biggest superhero events of all time.

Deadpool & Wolverine is the first MCU movie to star X-Men characters that were previously controlled by Fox. The film is rumored to bring back many X-Men stars for cameos, with Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool and Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine leading the charge. Besides the love letter to Fox’s X-Men movies with Deadpool & Wolverine, Marvel has been slowly laying the ground for the reboot of the X-Men by bringing back actors throughout the Multiverse Saga. All of that will culminate in the MCU X-Men movie, and after its first major update, a nearly 25-year negative X-Men trend might finally be ending.

The MCU’s X-Men Movie Has Found Its Writer

The Reboot’s First Major Update

While there is still no director or cast attached to it, Marvel Studios’ X-Men movie has landed a writer. Michael Lesslie will pen the script for the X-Men reboot, with Marvel now searching for a director to help establish the vision for the film and oversee its development alongside Lesslie and Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige. It has been reported that after Hollywood restarted work following the end of the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike, the script assignment for the X-Men movie became one of the most in-demand jobs in the industry.

After meeting with several writers for the X-Men movie, Marvel Studios was reported to have boiled down to finalists that included Lesslie and Rafe Judkins (via The InSneider), the latter of which serves as the showrunner of Prime Video’s Wheel of Time series. Judkins was also a co-writer on Tom Holland’s Uncharted movie. As for the writer of the MCU’s X-Men movie, Lesslie’s body of work includes features such as the live-action Assassin’s Creed movie starring Michael Fassbender and, more recently, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, with the latter being a great sign for the X-Men.

The Hunger Games Franchise Shows How The Female X-Men Heroes Can Be Done Right In The MCU

Lesslie Is Perfect To Fix A Negative Trend

Lesslie’s latest blockbuster movie, the $337.4 million The Hunger Games prequel film The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, perfectly showcases how the writer would be able to finally do right by the female X-Men members on the big screen. Despite many exciting female characters from the comics having been adapted in Fox’s X-Men movies, very few were done right. With rumors indicating that Marvel Studios is aiming to focus the X-Men movie on the team’s female members, Lesslie’s work on The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is fitting.

One of the movie’s protagonists was Rachel Zegler’s Lucy Gray Baird. The Hunger Games franchise is deeply seeped into political aspects, as there is a system of classes with members of different districts facing off in an arena to the death to keep the power and prestige of The Capitol running. Lesslie’s prequel did a great job of thrusting Lucy Gray into the political setting, making the character a force for change with many sides, being lighter when at ease and intense in action scenes. It showcases Lesslie’s ability to make the female X-Men shine, as both share common ground.

The Female X-Men Heroes Deserve Their Chance To Shine After Years Of Live-Action Issues

Fox Failed Iconic Female X-Men

The X-Men features one of the most expansive roster of heroes in Marvel Comics. As such, many of the best female characters of the comic book giant are part of the team, and many of them got to go the live-action route in Fox’s X-Men movies. However, the problem is that the franchise either adapted the female X-Men poorly — such as the controversial choice of having Jennifer Lawrence’s Mystique be one of the leaders of the team — or gave them little time to shine.

Jean Grey is perhaps the most important female X-Men, and what might be her biggest comic book story, The Dark Phoenix Saga, was done wrong not once but twice by Fox. Storm’s two versions got relegated to a couple of cool power scenes. Kitty Pryde was essentially just Iceman’s love interest. Rogue had none of her confidence, and more. After X-Men ’97 showed Marvel Studios knows how to do right by the female mutants, Michael Lesslie’s The Hunger Games work makes him the perfect writer to bring a new vision for the female characters in the MCU’s X-Men movie.