Recent rumors have pointed to Marvel Studios bumping their X-Men reboot to the front of the line with an eye on rolling it out as part of the Multiverse Saga. With each passing day, it looks as though there may just be some merit to that as more rumblings surface about the studio’s search for a creative team for the project. It’s not always easy to separate facts from bullshit but it does seem clear that the studio is indeed narrowing down the pool of potential writers for the film. Now, a new report provides a pair of surprising names that might be in the mix as well as a potential timeline.
According to Jeff “The In” Sneider, Rafe Judkins and Michael Lesslie are among the names on Marvel Studios’ shortlist to write the screenplay for their X-Men reboot. Sneider also believes that the studio could settle on a scribe for the project by the end of the month.
Judkins, who wrote 5 episodes of the ABC melodrama Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Tom Holland-led Uncharted, has most recently served as the showrunner for Amazon’s Wheel of Time adaptation. Lesslie recently wrote the screenplay for The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and, in 2016, the screenplay for Assassin’s Creed.
Sneider has made no claims about the studio favoring one or the other of the two and it’s important to remember that there’s no indication of how many other writers are on the shortlist. Ryan Coogler, whose name was recently floated as a potential director for the X-Men project, would likely also prefer to write the screenplay for the project were he to in fact be hired to helm it. With a project as big as X-Men, you can be sure the trades are doing everything they can to find out as much as possible about it so if Sneider’s report has merit to it and the studio is closing in on a writer, a trade breaking the news would be expected.
