We’re still in the dark about the direction of Marvel’s reboot of the “X-Men,” but we have an official update of sorts, giving us an idea of when those elements are expected to come together. Marvel Studios head and CCO Kevin Feige appeared virtually at the Disney APAC Content Showcase in Singapore (via Deadline). During the Marvel presentation, Feige reaffirmed to the audience there that the “X-Men” reboot will have some sort of connection to “Avengers: Secret Wars.”

“I think you will see that continues in our next few movies with some ‘X-Men’ players that you might recognize. Right after that, the whole story of [‘Avengers: Secret Wars’] really leads us into a new age of mutants and of the ‘X-Men.’ Again, [it’s] one of those dreams come true. We finally have the X-Men back,” Feige recently said.

Something we really shouldn’t be surprised given talk of the next phase of MCU movies ushering in “The Mutant Saga.”

This comes after “Deadpool & Wolverine” became Marvel’s first big live-action mutant project ahead of their “X-Men” reboot (alongside the animation revival of “X-Men ’97”) and whatever they have planned leading up to it post-“Avengers: Secret Wars.” The R-rated pic amassed a hefty $1.3 billion at the box office (on par with “Black Panther” back in 2018), and Disney+ claims that the film’s streaming debut on the service nabbed 19.4 million views globally. Their first big effort in the world of mutants has been a wild success for Marvel/Disney; given the recent narrative of “superhero fatigue,” it looks like “Deadpool & Wolverine” has been the exception.

What we do know about the next mainline “X-Men” film is that British screenwriter Michael Lesslie (“The Little Drummer Girl,” “Macbeth”) was hired by the studio to tackle the script. It’s unclear if Marvel has hired subsequent writers to help out or if Lesslie’s work will make the final shooting script, as Marvel projects tend to go through multiple drafts/rewrites with multiple screenwriters contributing to them.

We’re still waiting on Marvel to announce things like a director and official release date.

Deadpool, Logan/Wolverine, Laura/X-23, Colossus, and others (Cable and Domino?) are more than likely going to appear in “Avengers: Secret Wars,” but it is unclear who will be playing the rebooted versions of the “X-Men” beyond The Multiverse Saga. Speaking of continuations, there was a deleted scene from “Deadpool & Wolverine” with Channing Tatum‘s Remy LeBeau, aka Gambit, surviving The Void and potentially making his own jump to another universe. Ryan Reynolds told EW that Marvel Studios is “obsessed with” Tatum’s Gambit and could signal his continuation of the X-Men member moving forward into the reboot.

“I honestly don’t know what goes on behind closed doors in the bookkeeping sessions at Marvel, but I do know that they’re obsessed with him in that role,” Reynolds said. “It’s kind of like the same situation I went through. Once you show that it works well, that’s really what they need. Sometimes, they just need to see it in action.”

In “The Marvels,” we saw Kelsey Grammer reprise the role of Dr. Hank McCoy, aka The Beast in a post-credit scene but remains to be seen if that universe holds answers to the future of the “X-Men” or simply was meant to tease things to come like “Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness” did with their own cameo from Patrick Stewart’s Professor Xavier.

With “Avengers: Doomsday” and “Avengers: Secret Wars” shooting close together (not back-to-back) by The Russo Brothers, there is an expectation we’ll potentially start hearing more details about the latter likely sometime next year. As we already know, “Doomsday” has Robert Downey Jr. returning to the MCU as the villainous Victor Von Doom (expected to appear first in “The Fantastic Four: First Steps”), but the “Secret Wars” villain has yet to be announced. We’re starting to suspect that it’ll be a version of The Beyonder, and the return of Tom Hiddleston’s Loki (overseer of The Sacred Timeline) wouldn’t be all that shocking, either, since the TVA is still a major player.

Other things expected to be announced in the near future include “Doctor Strange 3” and “Black Panther 3,” also, we’re still curious how “Spider-Man 4” will impact the “Avengers” installments.

SOURCE: DEADLINE