Marvel is said to be in the early to mid-20s; A director is currently being sought

It looks like Marvel Studios is finally starting to make some progress on the long awaited X-Men reboot.

Following a recent rumor claiming that Stranger Things alum Sadie Sink is the studio’s top choice to play Jean Grey, we have some updates thanks The warm microphone‘s Jeff Sneider and scooper Daniel Richtman.

Whether or not Sink ends up being cast as Jean, Marvel is said to be looking for actors in the same age range (early to mid-20s) to play our new team of mutant heroes. This was to be expected, although there had been rumors that the plan was to go even younger (late teenage).

Richtman reports that a director is currently being sought (although he does not name any potential candidates), and the film will be set after the events of Avengers: Secret Wars. He also reiterates that the plan is for Deadpool and Wolverine star Hugh Jackman to “stay after Secret Wars and do more stuff with Deadpool.”

We assume that means Jackman will reteam with Ryan Reynolds for a fourth Deadpool movie, but where would that leave Logan when it comes to X-Men reboot? We’ve heard that another actor won’t actually be cast as a new version of Wolverine (at least not at first), and the character simply won’t be part of the team. If accurate, this would allow Jackman to make a few more appearances as the fan-favorite berserker, while giving Marvel time to think about replacing him once he hangs up his claws for good.

If some of the X-Men make their debut in the next one Avengers movie (which they’re rumored to be doing), there’s a chance we could get some official casting news pretty soon.

During a recent interview with Discussing movieswas Kevin Feige asked how it feels to know that “we’re getting closer to seeing the X-Men and Avengers together on the big screen.”

“It’s extremely emotional, on a personal level, to have made a film with Hugh after 25 years and that I was a small part of the first X-Men film. And knowing that thanks to various corporate deals with studio entities , we now have 1000s of characters left — characters I honestly hadn’t thought about in years because we didn’t have the rights to them. Now that we do, it’s fun to think (about) who we finally can).Our animated series X-Men ’97 was kind of the first taste of people reuniting with the X-Men mythology and that story, and the reaction to that series just got us more excited about how to bring the soap opera and the saga back the mutants to. MCU.”

Michael Lesslie has been hired to write the screenplay.