Marvel Studios Execs Are Gearing Up To Hear Pitches For Their 'X-Men' Movie

The mutants are rising in the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Now that the Writers Guild of America has won their fair contract, work can resume, and studios have begun looking to hire writers for their open assignments. For Marvel Studios, that includes movement on their long-awaited iteration of an X-Men film series, and it is not unexpectedly a top target for writers.

Marvel will start scheduling writer meetings later this fall for pitches. Since the film still hasn’t been dated, they’re not in any real rush and will take their time finding the right fit. The company has chosen not to comment but a decision will likely come at the start of next year. The anticipation of a new X-Men franchise has been building for a while, coming from Disney’s purchase of 20th Century Fox and its library in 2019, and the ending of its original two-decade X-Men film franchise with Dark Phoenix that year. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has already seen the incorporation of several other heroes whose film rights they did not have when they started on Iron Man in 2005 or its eventual 2008 release, most notably Spider-Man to the tune of nearly $4 billion.

With there being at least 6 years since gaining the X-Men film rights, there’s been sprinkles of homage to that previous continuity in Phases Four and Five. It started with Evan Peters’s charmed appearance as Pietro in WandaVision, as in most Marvel continuities Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch were Magneto’s children before the pettiness began, but because they were X-Men and Avengers, rights overlapped. Patrick Stewart played Professor Charles Xavier, as he did in Fox’s X-Men films, in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, more specifically his Earth-838 Illuminati member doppelganger. He was equipped with an animated series-accurate hoverchair, and said series theme song playing as entrance music. It also played when Kamala Khan was revealed to be a mutant in Ms. Marvel. Coming up, Deadpool 3, currently set for release this May, allows the fourth wall-breaking merc with a mouth and his supporting cast to transcend universes and join the main MCU, with what’s being called a road trip buddy comedy with at least a version of Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine that has a comics-accurate suit.

Something that also builds audience hunger for the universe’s new iteration of mutants is that the X-Men’s return to animation is not its own new series, but a continuation of the classic ‘90s series which will be known as X-Men ‘97. That premieres early next year. Phase Six has several dates that may or may not be a mix of spots known at the original July 2022 announcement and new ones created when the studios chose to shuffle their release schedules rather than negotiate. The phase currently reaches into 2027, where currently only Avengers: Secret Wars is situated on May 7.

Open writing assignments are expected to pick back up in these first post-strike weeks. While writers already assigned to certain projects are back writing, other fields like the spec market and productions will remain lowly active or on hold until SAG-AFTRA gets its deal.

Source: Deadline