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Obsession star Inde Navarette has revealed she recently met with X-Men reboot director Jake Schreier, and Marvel fans are already discussing which member of the mutant team she’s likely to play
Navarette, the breakout star of this year’s hugely-profitable horror movie Obsession, has told Nylon that she was interested in a Marvel role and that she’d also held talks with Schreier
The Thunderbolts/The New Avengers director is currently spearheading plans to helm Marvel’s new take on the X-Men,ng 2027’s Avengers: Secret Wars. While the project is still years from release, it is being seen as a lynchpin of Marvel’s next saga, and is already the subject of intense speculation over casting
Who will portray the next generation of X-Men? Marvel is reportedly looking for a younger cast to differentiate this next generation of superheroes from Fox’s veterans, and to ensure the team features the classic blend of superhero and teen drama that X-Men comics are known for. One report said this younger focus would also be used to acquire more affordable talent — keeping costs down
Of course, there is already widespread belief among fans that we’ve already seen the casting of one new X-Men character — as many are convinced that Sadie Sink’s secret role in Spider-Man: Brand New Day will be revealed as Jean Grey. Sink, now 24, would likely fit the right age range. Navarette, currently 25, is almost the same age
“Inde is my top choice to play Mystique,” wrote one fan on reddit, in a lengthy thread discussing who Navarette might play. “The woman has a REALLY expressive face that could portray a lot of great emotion even with the makeup.”
“She’d be GREAT as Mystique,” agreed another Marvel fan
“She’s Psylocke for me,” countered another
“I’d imagine they’d probably want an actress that’s a little older for Mystique just in case they go the mother of Nightcrawler and Rogue route,” a fourth fan suggested
“Mystique’s one of the few characters where you could cast a 80-year-old and it doesn’t matter because she can look however she wants and she’s using her powers most of the time,” another fan said
While Schreier’s movie isn’t expected until 2028 at the earliest, it’s clear Marvel already as its eyes on the MCU’s future following the end of its current Multiverse Saga, which is set to be bookended by Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars. These movies will not only cap off the MCU’s current, rather uneven era, but also bring in legacy characters from the Fox X-Men universe in a final send-off for them, too
All of this paves the way for the next incarnation of X-Men to feel completely different, while also presumably able to fit naturally into the MCU’s continuity following the reality-changing events expected in Secret Wars’ narrative. Marvel previously confirmed that Avengers: Secret Wars would act as something of a “reset” for the MCU (don’t call it a reboot), allowing its universe to feature fresh versions of classic characters — such as the X-Men — interacting with the surviving members of its main cast.
“We had a great experience with [Schreier] on Thunderbolts,” MCU mastermind Kevin Feige previously told Nerdist about the studio’s X-Men plans, “and if you saw that movie, what he did with those character interactions — he also has his pulse on, shall we say, a younger demographic
“Not — he’s younger than me, for sure — but he’s tapped into that in a way that I think is important. It was important for Thunderbolts, much more important for X-Men, because X-Men, as it was in the comics, will be a very youth-oriented, focused and cast movie.”
Who do you think Navarette might play?
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky@tomphillipseg.bsky.social
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