That One Wish Willow is paying off for Inde Navarrette. Not only does the Obsession star continue to draw Oscar buzz for the horror smash, she has officially earned her superhero card.
Navarrette was introduced Friday at Disney’s D23 fan expo as one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s new class of X-Men alongside Adam Driver, Samara Weaving, Christopher Abbott, Kit Connor, and Maya Boyd. They join Spider-Man: Brand New Day‘s Sadie Sink in the reboot of the uncanny franchise directed by Jake Schreier (Thunderbolts).
The announcement was a highlight of the Marvel portion of Disney Entertainment’s showcase panel, which played to a packed Honda Center a few minutes from Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif.
Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige introduced the new mutant lineup: Sink will reprise her role as Jean Grey, with Navarrette as Rogue; Connor as Cyclops, Abbott as Professor X, Weaving as Emma Frost, Boyd as Storm, and Driver as the film’s presumptive big bad, Mr. Sinister. The new X-Men is being written by Schreier and frequent collaborator Lee Sung Jin (Beef) along with Beef consulting producer and writer Joanna Calo.
In May, Lee told Gold Derby that “it’s really early, but Jake Schreier has such a clear vision for what he wants out of this movie that [Feige and the Marvel braintrust] are fully supportive of.”
“We’re going in every day into Marvel in a big room,” Lee said. “We’re in there all day long, and we’ve got all the X-Men characters up on the board. I’m very excited for a character-driven story. I think that’s [the] vision for this, getting back to character first.”
In describing the X-Men project as “character first,” Lee likens this new take to the era of the comics overseen by writer Chris Claremont, who steered the mutants from 1975 to 1991. “There were so many juicy, soapy subplots, inner character dynamics [in the Claremont era], which, as a writer, those are the things that excite you the most.”
The new X-Men is set for release on May 5, 2028.
Several of the original X-Men cast, including Patrick Stewart (Professor X), Ian McKellen (Magneto), James Marsden (Cyclops), Kelsey Grammer (Beast), Alan Cumming (Nightcrawler), and Rebecca Romijn (Mystique), will appear in December’s Avengers: Doomsday, where it is widely believed they will be dispatched by Robert Downey Jr.’s Doctor Doom to make way for the new cast.
