Following D23, Marvel Studios upcoming X-Men movie has an official release date and a partial cast(even if it doesn’t have an official title). And, according to director Jake Schreier, it has an identity rooted in two of Marvel Comics most iconic runs.
While taking with Good Morning America following the D23 panel, Schreier cited stories Chris Claremont and Jonathan Hickman among those that inspired the 2028 film.
Digging into those comics like the Chris Claremont run and the newer Jonathan Hickman stuff. There are so many stories that are still untold.
Famous for turning the X-Men into a serialized drama where the characters’ interpersonal lives were just as high-stakes as their battles with Sentinels, Claremont’s Uncanny era not only saved the book but also elevated it. Whether through the creation of hundreds of characters–dozens of which have stood the test of time–or simply enriching the fan favorites who already existed, Claremont cemented Marvel’s mutants and heroes as a brand that resonated with fans then and still does so today.
Like Claremont’s, Jonathan Hickman‘s modern take cleverly reinvented what fans thought possible from the Children of the Atom. Hickman’s run on the X-Men (spanning House of X / Powers of X into the early Krakoan Age) fundamentally reimagined the franchise by shifting mutants from a persecuted minority hiding in a mansion to a sovereign global superpower.
Former villains like Magneto, Apocalypse, Mister Sinister, and Apocalypse joined forces with the heroes. This created an eerie, morally complex society where traditional hero-vs-villain dynamics were replaced by geopolitical maneuvering and internal political infighting.
Interestingly enough, Claremont and Hickman’s runs were miles apart conceptually. Historically–thanka primarily to Claremont–X-Men books thrived on soap operatic melodrama: love triangles, hysterical betrayals, crying in the rain, and messy, raw relationship angst. Hickman stripped almost all of that emotional core away and, in its place, installed ideological drama and complex sci-fi beats.
What exactly the combination of those two styles might look like remains to be seen; however, the thought of pairing Hickman’s powerful world-building with Claremont’s emotionally raw characters might be the perfect mix for the new era of mutants.
