Marvel Packs a Punch at D23 as a New Generation of X-Men is Unveiled
The newest incarnation of the most famous mutant superhero team in comic books is ready to hit the silver screen.
This post contains spoilers for Spider-Man: Brand New Day!
Announced by Marvel head honcho Kevin Feige and new X-Men director Jake Schreirer at the 2026 D23 Expo, this new generations of heroes leads with Kit Connor (Heartstopper) as Cyclops, Sadie Sink (Stranger Things, The Whale) as Jean Grey, Maya Boyd (& Juliette) as Storm, Samara Weaving (Ready or Not) as Emma Frost, Christopher Abbott (Girls) as Professor X and Inde Navarrette (Obsession) as Rogue. Possibly the biggest and least expected casting announcement was the reveal that Adam Driver would be playing the villainous Mr. Sinister in the upcoming film.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe’s take on Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s allegory for the Civil Rights Movement has been a long time coming. 20th Century Fox long held the film rights to the X-Men series. The studio began adapting the comic books in 2000 to both critical and box office success. However, the positive reception of the franchise began to wane by the 2010s with flops like X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Dark Phoenix. The once mighty series began to be seen as an industry pariah and the laughing stock of the ultra-popular superhero movie machine, especially in comparison to Disney’s own MCU. Despite this, the franchise was a massive step in popularizing comic book adaptations in the 21st century, and the impact that the X-Men series has had has been numerous.
The public perception would begin to shift, however, after Disney acquired Fox in 2019. The possibility of folding in the classic X-Men lineup was met with great excitement from fans, and the storytelling possibilities that could have been brought about by such a merger would be unprecedented. Once the $71.3 billion acquisition was completed, Kevin Feige would go on to tease the arrival of the mutant characters during the conclusion of Marvel’s panel at San Diego Comic-Con in July of the same year.
The first full appearance of a mutant character came in the Disney+ original series Ms. Marvel, which revealed that series lead Kamala Khan was actually a mutant. This reveal also included a fan-pleasing playing of the classic X-Men theme from the 90s cartoon. This was followed by not only the premiere of X-Men ’97, a continuation of the previously mentioned series, which was met with critical acclaim and was one of Marvel’s highest-rated projects at the time. The big inclusion of the X-Men in the MCU came in the summer of 2024 with the release of Deadpool and Wolverine, the third in the series, which acted as both a bridge for its characters to appear in the MCU and a send-off for Fox’s series of films. The film made over one billion dollars at the box office and set the stage for this new era of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This plan to re-introduce the characters began its final stage this summer when Sadie Sink made her debut as Jean Grey, the surprise villain of Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
The director for the upcoming and as of yet untitled X-Men film is set to be Jake Schreirer, director of Marvel’s 2025 film Thunderbolts*. While that particular film underperformed at the box office, grossing under $400 million on a budget of $180 million, critics and Marvel fans alike praised the more character-driven approach that was taken with the film, which bodes well for this new era of Marvel and for one of their most popular teams.