Marvel’s veteran X-Men writer Chris Claremont has said that Famke Janssen will be back as Jean Grey in Avengers: Doomsday — despite previous claims by the actress that she’s not involved.
Speaking via the Power of X-Men podcast, in a clip shared to Instagram, Claremont praises the recent Avengers: Doomsday trailer featuring various legacy X-Men movie cast members and goes on to state that Janssen will appear as well.
The trailer shows Patrick Stewart’s Professor X, Ian McKellen’s Magneto, and James Marsden’s Cyclops
“The thing I find most wonderful about it is they’re bringing back… the original cast, including Famke,” Claremont commented.
This isn’t the first time Claremont has made notable claims about the plots of Avengers: Doomsday and its upcoming sequel Avengers: Secret Wars. At the Huntsville Pop Culture Expo last year, Claremont appeared to reveal numerous other returning characters not yet (then) confirmed for the movies.
Speaking in April 2025, Claremont said that Chris Evans would return — something that Marvel has now officially confirmed. Elizabeth Olsen will also be back as Scarlet Witch, Claremont continued, and the movies would also include the character Psylocke.
At the time, Marvel fans speculated that Claremont could be privy to plot details after being drafted in as an X-Men consultant — a role that other Marvel comic book writers have performed for previous movies. Whether he’ll continue to do this in future if he keeps discussing what he knows is another matter, however.
The Most Surprising Avengers and Marvel Characters Not Announced for Doomsday
As for Janssen herself, the actress has previously denied being asked by Marvel to reprise her role, saying the question has “never” and “never ever” been put to her since the end of Fox’s X-Men movies. Janssen played Jean Grey from 2000’s X-Men right up to a cameo in 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past. Her character, as the Phoenix, died in 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand, with Game of Thrones star Sophie Turner taking over the role for subsequent X-Men movies.
Principal photography for Avengers: Doomsday wrapped late last year, though it’s widely understood that Marvel plans additionaling filming for the movie this spring, with an eye to including more characters whose actors were unavailable last time around.
Fox X-Men veterans set for Doomsday include the aforementioned Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, and James Marsden, as well as Kelsey Grammer, Alan Cumming, and Rebecca Romijn. Grammer famously played Beast in the Fox X-Men franchise before making his MCU debut via The Marvels’ post-credits scene. Stewart played Charles Xavier/Professor X in the X-Men films before appearing briefly in the MCU via Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness as a member of the Illuminati. McKellen, who played Magneto, has yet to appear in the MCU. Neither has Cumming, who played Nightcrawler, Romijn, who played Mystique, nor Marsden. It begs the question: is Avengers: Doomsday secretly an Avengers vs. X-Men movie?
Image credit: Michael Loccisano/Getty Images.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social