Elliot Page and James McAvoy are weighing in on Marvel’s plans to recast the X-Men in the future.
The actors, who played Kitty Pryde and Professor Charles Xavier, respectively, in the 20th Century Fox era of superhero movies, were asked during a panel at New York Comic Con on Sunday for their thoughts on Kevin Feige’s recent statements. The head of Marvel Studios previously revealed that the X-Men will eventually be recast following the events of Avengers: Secret Wars.
“We’re gonna see another Charles, another Kitty, probably before too long, perhaps,” moderator Josh Horowitz said. “Depending on what you read on the internet, I’ve heard Colman Domingo. I’ve heard Bella Ramsey. I’ve heard a lot of different names. I don’t know if you follow that or you hear that.”
He continued, “What do you make of those names or, just generally, the idea of someone inheriting the mantle of these characters from you?”
Colman Domingo; Bella Ramsey.
Pascal Le Segretain/Getty;Michael Buckner/Deadline via Getty
Page was fully on board with the casting suggestions. “I mean, yes, absolutely,” he said. “I don’t really follow [the casting rumors], but they sound fantastic. I mean, it’d be just so exciting to see people do a take on a new iteration [of X-Men].”
McAvoy also voiced his support, especially over the idea of Domingo taking the reins as the telepathic founder of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters.
“Look, I’m excited to see what happens next. I was a fan before I was an employee and I’ll be a fan again!” he teased. “You want it to be…I just can’t wait for it to be…Oh no, that was going to sound bad. It’s going to put a lot of pressure on people. Colman Domingo sounds amazing, though!”
No matter who ends up cast in the end, the trio joked that there’s only one person who can play Wolverine: Hugh Jackman.
“I was gonna say, 10 years from now — it’s probably gonna be 10 minutes from now — when A.I. has taken over and playing all the roles, and there are no actors anymore, he will still be playing Wolverine,” McAvoy joked. “Even A.I. will be like, ‘Nah, he got it! Nah!’”
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Page played Kitty, a mutant capable of phasing through solid matter, in 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand and 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past. McAvoy led the prequel movies as a young Charles Xavier starting in 2011’s X-Men: First Class.
Feige announced at a July press event that everyone’s favorite team of super-powered mutants will be recast ahead of Jake Schreier’s (Thunderbolts/The New Avengers) upcoming X-Men film. Before that, though, many of the actors who starred in the original X-Men movies will be reprising their roles one last time in Avengers: Doomsday.
James McAvoy as Professor Charles Xavier in ‘X-Men: First Class’.
20th Century Fox
James Marsden (Scott Summers/Cyclops), Patrick Stewart (Charles Xavier/Professor X), Ian McKellen (Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto), Rebecca Romijn (Mystique), Alan Cumming (Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler), and Kelsey Grammer (Hank McCoy/Beast) are all confirmed to star in the upcoming film. Channing Tatum, who played Gambit in the smash hit Deadpool & Wolverine, will also finally get his chance to join the team.
These beloved characters were able to officially make the leap into the MCU after the 2019 Disney and Fox merger. The cast has already made a few MCU appearances already. An alternate-dimension version of Stewart’s Charles was brutally slaughtered in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, while Grammer’s Hank appeared in a post-credits scene for The Marvels.
Speaking with The Playlist, Feige called Schreier’s X-Men a “youth-focused reboot,” adding, “That may be reflected in mutant castings, and it’ll definitely be felt in the tone and perspective of the film.”
Schreier noted to the outlet that the film will broach “inherently interesting and complex material” because “the core of what the X-Men is involves complexity.”
He added, “It’s an incredible opportunity with super interesting characters and internal conflict. These characters are wrestling with their identity and place in the world…To be able to explore all of the ideas that are inherent to that rich source material, but also at the scale inherent to the source material, that’s like a very rare and fortunate opportunity. That’s very exciting.”