Following the 2019 purchase of Fox by Disney—a business move that meant mutants could appear in the same cinematic universe as Avengers—Marvel has been slowly dipping its toes in mutant waters. A Beast here, a reference there. A delightful animated show that presumably has no bearing on whatever live-action X-Men come to the screen next. But an X-Men film is most certainly on the way: Last fall, Deadline reported that the studio had begun meeting with writers, but was taking its time with the inevitable project.
Now, Deadline says Marvel may have found their guy (and yes, it’s a guy). Michael Lesslie is “in negotiations” to write the film, which has no director and no stars as of yet. (As ever, baseball hat aficionado Kevin Feige will produce.)
Recently, Lesslie adapted The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes for the screen. He was one of the three writers of the Assassin’s Creed movie adaptation, and his upcoming projects are an odd bunch, including Now You See Me 3 and the very intriguing, Riz Ahmed-starring take on Hamlet.
As no X-Men fan has forgotten, the last live-action X-Men movie was 2019’s Dark Phoenix (pictured above), which marked not the first but the second time writer Simon Kinberg botched the Dark Phoenix plotline from the classic comics. (Kinberg wrote and directed Dark Phoenix; he was also one of the writers of X-Men: The Last Stand.) Once upon a time, the X-Men films were great, and their success arguably paved the way for the Marvel Cinematic Universe in which we now all live. Perhaps we can have greatness once again.
