Marvel’s X-Men reboot is still in the early stages, but one big piece of the puzzle is finally starting to come into focus. For all the speculation around casting, team lineups, and how mutants will be folded into the MCU, we don’t actually know a great deal about how they’ll make that leap from the page to the screen — or indeed, from which page. That’s a huge deal with a franchise like X-Men, where different eras carry wildly different tones, themes, and character dynamics. Now, director Jake Schreier has revealed exactly which material he’s been pulling from while shaping Marvel’s new take on the mutants.
Speaking with Collider’s Steve Weintraub, Schreier revealed he’s been immersing himself in the classic Chris Claremont era of X-Men comics while the film continues to come together. Adding that he would be working with Beef creator Lee Sung Jin and The Bear scribe and co-showrunner Joanna Calo on the script, Schreier opened up on the inspirations they’d be leaning on. “They have come in and are working on a draft right now, which is really, really exciting to be able to put that group of people together again,” said Schreier. He told Collider:
“I also think just having the time to kind of sit back, and I’ve just been digging into so many of the old comics and the entire Claremont run, and just going through stuff and really trying to think about what can we do well that feels new and feels different, and that hasn’t been done well before? Obviously, there’s such an incredible cinematic tradition of these comics, but what can we do? And how can we put our own spin on what that is?”
That’s a pretty major reveal, even if Schreier only says it in passing. Claremont’s run is one of the defining stretches in X-Men history, helping turn the team into the emotionally messy, politically charged, soap-operatic powerhouse that fans still love decades later. It’s the era that deepened the lore of characters like Cyclops, Jean Grey, Storm, Wolverine, Kitty Pryde, Rogue, Nightcrawler, Colossus, and Magneto while also pushing the comics into much darker, richer territory.
