Will we get X-Men casting news at D23?
The internet is convinced we will. I’m not.
Tomorrow is the start of the D23 ultimate fan event. It’s an exciting weekend for Disney and Marvel fans. I’ve never been and would love to go one year. This year, the Internet is abuzz in the belief that we might get an X-Men cast announcement at D23.
I’m not so sure.
The Supporting Evidence
Chris Snellgrove at Giant Freakin Robot makes the case in Disney Just Secretly Revealed When We’ll Get More X-Men News.
Recently, Deadline revealed that Ready or Not star Samara Weaving would be playing Emma Frost and that Kit Connor would be playing Cyclops. When are we going to get more news, though, including official announcements from Feige or Marvel Studios? Many have been assuming we’ll get those announcements at the upcoming D23 fan event. Now, it seems that Disney has confirmed those assumptions in a very sneaky, very fun way with their latest D23 promotional poster.
So there’s your evidence for X-Men news at D23:
- Samara Weaving cast as Emma Frost
- Kit Connor cast as Cyclops
- Sadie Sink is Jean Grey in Spider-Man: Brand New Day
- And now, this really cool looking poster with Storm and other Marvel characters
The poster is cool, and you would imagine significant, especially given the inclusion of Storm. So there's some good evidence on the side of something X-Men related going on a D23.
The Evidence Against
The real problem is that the casting news we have is slim. No pun intended there, Cyclops. It’s just him and Emma Frost that have been cast. We just don’t have enough casting news to warrant a full X-Men cast reveal. It’s not like Marvel can cast the film in the next 24 hours before D23, and if there were going to be a full cast reveal, the specific casting news would already be leaked.
Also, Marvel doesn’t typically start hyping movies up 2 years ahead of their release. Sure, there have been those phase 5 and phase 6 announcements, but those are pretty general. Nothing as specific as a full cast reveal.
What We Should Expect
I would expect the focus to be squarely on Avengers: Doomsday. Maybe we get a little tease of Avengers: Secret Wars. Those movies are the entire focus of the MCU for the next year and half. I don’t expect Marvel to undercut that by hyping up X-Men.
I’m not saying all this to take all the fun out of D23. Just temper your expectations.
I think we’ll get some kind of nod to the X-Men—maybe a Sadie Sink interview talking about her character and the implications for a future film, maybe an X-Men ’97 retrospective of some sort. I just really don’t expect a full X-Men cast announcement, and I would hate for everyone to be disappointed when that doesn’t happen.