James McAvoy has some solid words of advice for Christopher Abbott as the Wolf Man star prepares to assume the mantle of Professor Charles Xavier in Marvel Studios’ upcoming X-Men reboot.
“Enjoy it, and explore,” McAvoy told Collider at the Toronto International Film Festival. “Find something. Patrick [Stewart] explored what he explored, I explored what I explored, and I hope he gets to do something and bring himself and bring something new to it, as well, because we can’t just watch the same character the same way for 15 films, you know? So, I hope he gets the opportunity to bring himself to it.”
McAvoy played the mutant telepath across four of the 20th Century Fox films: X-Men: First Class (2011), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) and X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019).
“Did we feel the pressure when we did First Class? I don’t know,” McAvoy said of the ’60s-set prequel co-starring Michael Fassbender and Jennifer Lawrence. “There was something really enjoyable about the nature of that reboot. It felt like a different kind of film, and it kind of liberated us, I think, from some of the pressure. And then we were marketing it and the pressure all hit.”
*Thunderbolts director Jake Schreier is set to direct the MCU X-men revamp, armed with a screenplay from Beef creator Lee Sung Jin and The Bear co-creator Joanna Calo.
Abbott’s fellow members of the newly-minted group include Sadie Sink (Spider-Man: Brand New Day) as Jean Grey, Inde Navarrette (Obsession) as Anna Marie LeBeau/Rogue, Kit Connor (Heartstopper) as Scott Summers/Cyclops, Samara Weaving (Ready or Not) as Emma Frost, Asa Germann (Gen V), as Warren Worthington III/Angel and relative newcomer Maya Boyd as Ororo Munroe/Storm. Star Wars alum Adam Driver rounds out the ensemble as classic mutant antagonist, Mr. Sinister.
The project marks Abbott’s second visit to the Marvel sandbox following his turn as the Foreigner in Sony’s ill-fated Kraven the Hunter.
When Does the X-Men Reboot Come Out?
Marvel Studios’ currently untitled X-Men reboot is scheduled for release on May 5, 2028.
A good chunk of the OG 20th Century Fox crew—namely Patrick Stewart (Professor X), Ian McKellen (Magneto), James Marsden (Cyclops), Rebecca Romijn (Mystique), Kelsey Grammar (Beast) and Alan Cumming (Nightcrawler)—will appear in Avengers: Doomsday alongside Channing Tatum’s Gambit.
Tatum famously tried to get a solo Remy LeBeau movie off the ground for a long time before Disney acquired 20th Century Fox in 2019 for $71 billion. He finally got to portray Gambit as a multiverse variant banished to the Void in 2024’s Deadpool & Wolverine.
