The X-Men are about to embark on a new cinematic era. While Marvel’s next big crossover, Avengers: Doomsday, features returning actors from earlier X-Men films, the Disney-owned studio is already working on a new movie with a new cast of mutants, helmed by Thunderbolts* director Jake Schreier. For superhero fans who grew up in the X-Men’s 20th Century Fox era, which began in 2000 with X-Men, it’s a bittersweet moment. But for Simon Kinberg, whose fingerprints are all over the last two decades of X-Men movies, it’s just sweet.
Kinberg helped write the scripts for X-Men: The Last Stand, X-Men: First Class, X-Men: Days of Future Past, and X-Men: Apocalypse. He also directed 2019’s X:Men: Dark Phoenix and produced even more Fox-Marvel movies, including 2015’s Fantastic Four and the Deadpool movies. But ever since Disney bought Fox in 2019, the X-Men are officially out of Kinberg’s hands.
“The X-Men movies are really Kevin Feige’s domain,” Kinberg told Polygon during a press tour for the third season of his Apple TV Plus series Invasion. “When they bought Fox — or 20th Century, whatever it’s called — all of that stuff became property of the MCU. It’s not a part of my life in the same way anymore, and I’m fine with it. I had an amazing time for 15-plus years working on all those movies. I’m really proud of a whole bunch of them.”
For any X-Men fans who may be worried about the fate of the X-Men under Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige, Kinberg also wants to offer some unsolicited words of encouragement.
“I say this genuinely — I have nothing to gain from saying this — I think they’re in great hands,” he says. “I met Kevin on X-Men 3 [The Last Stand]. He was working for Avi Arad. We were both young guys. I know how much he loves X-Men, and I know how much he loves Wolverine and all these characters.”
That means Kinberg is taking a big step back from the franchise, though he’s always happy to give his opinion when asked for it.
“It’s not at all the same process as it was at Fox,” he says. I’m at their pleasure if they want me to look at stuff and give thoughts. If they don’t want me, it’s all good.”
inberg hasn’t been invited to weigh in on Avengers: Doomsday or the MCU’s upcoming X-Men reboot (or if he has, he’s not willing to admit it), but he’s still plenty busy. He had an executive producer credit on 2024’s Deadpool & Wolverine, and a producer credit on The Running Man, Edgar Wright’s upcoming adaptation of the Stephen King novella previously adapted as a 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger sci-fi cult classic. Plus, there’s his sprawling sci-fi epic Invasion, which we’ll have more to say about in a separate article soon.
Last, but certainly not least, Kinberg is also involved as a producer on Paramount’s plans to reboot the Star Trek film franchise, though he can’t say much about that, either.
“There’s certain things over my career where I’ve gotten in trouble for saying things when I’m not supposed to say things,” he says cryptically. “So I would only say that I’ve been working on Star Trek, as reported.”
