Kevin Feige on which X-Men characters to bring into the MCU: “It’s an embarrassment of riches”

Since the very first moment Disney began considering acquiring 20th Century Fox, fans have been over the moon at the thought of the X-Men joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe. We’re still a ways off from a proper X-Men movie, but Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige spoke to io9 about the sheer amount of characters they have at their disposal to bring into the MCU.

“Well, it’s that phrase we use often at Marvel, which is ‘It’s an embarrassment of riches,’” Feige said. “And there are a lot of great X-Men characters in the Deadpool & Wolverine film. There are a lot of great X-Men characters in all of the Fox versions of the X-Men films. And there are a lot of great X-Men characters that have never gone on the big screen. So I think as we always try to do, as we did when we made the arrangement with Sony for Spider-Man, you’ll probably see a mix of characters you’ve seen before and characters you’ve never seen before.“

Feige added that the massive success of the X-Men ’97 animated series was “really exciting for us to see people revisit and reconnect with that world. And dare I say, the soap opera elements of that world, which is one of the things that’s so exciting to us about jumping into it finally in the MCU.“

Marvel has been taking their time with bringing the X-Men into the MCU, but we have seen a few X-characters pop up in the franchise in the last few years, including Professor X in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Beast in The Marvels. Of course, the upcoming Deadpool & Wolverine movie will include even more X-Men characters from the 20th Century Fox era. Feige even credited the original X-Men movie (as well as Blade) for helping to give birth to the MCU as we know it.

The X-Men movie is taking shape as it was revealed earlier this year that Michael Lesslie (The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes) was in negotiations to pen the screenplay.

Which X-Men characters do you hope make an appearance in the MCU movie?