Kit Connor, Sadie Sink and Samara Weaving Join Marvel's New X-Men
Kit Connor will play Scott Summers, the optic-blast-firing mutant known as Cyclops, in Marvel Studios' new X-Men movie, according to Deadline. The role, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in a 1963 comic, was previously played on screen by James Marsden and Tye Sheridan. Connor is best known for starring as Nick Nelson in the Netflix series Heartstopper and appeared in the 2025 film Warfare (The Hollywood Reporter).
He is not the only new face in the Xavier mansion. Sadie Sink, who played Max Mayfield across four seasons of Netflix's Stranger Things and co-starred with Brendan Fraser in The Whale (2022), will play Jean Grey — the telepathic and telekinetic core of the team (Deadline). Sink is already inside the Marvel machine: she first plays Jean Grey in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, set to arrive before the X-Men film (Variety).
Samara Weaving takes the role of Emma Frost, another telepathic mutant and one of Marvel's most mercurial characters — diamond skin, shifting loyalties, a wardrobe impossible to summarise in a family publication (Deadline). Josh Helman will play Major Bill Stryker, the anti-mutant military antagonist, and Peter Dinklage will play Dr. Bolivar Trask, the scientist whose Sentinel robots were built to hunt mutants.
Behind the camera, Jake Schreier is directing. Schreier most recently helmed Thunderbolts* for Marvel. The script comes from Lee Sung Jin and Joanna Calo, the writing team behind the acclaimed FX series The Bear (Deadline). Deadline reporter Justin Kroll broke the exclusive casting stories for Cyclops and Emma Frost.
The new film is the first X-Men feature since Disney acquired 20th Century Fox and its library in 2019, bringing the mutant rights fully under Marvel's parent company. Development began in September 2023, when Marvel opened the door to writer pitches (Deadline). Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige confirmed in July 2025 that the studio would recast the X-Men — and Tony Stark — following the Secret Wars crossover, clearing the way for a fresh ensemble (Variety).
The fresh faces will share the screen with some very familiar ones. Per an earlier Deadline report, the cast includes returning X-Men actors Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier, Ian McKellen as Magneto, James Marsden as Cyclops, Alan Cumming as Nightcrawler, Rebecca Romijn as Mystique, and Kelsey Grammer as Beast, alongside Channing Tatum as Gambit (Deadline). Several of those names also appear in the Avengers: Doomsday roster, which Variety listed in March 2025 as including Stewart, McKellen, Marsden, and Romijn (Variety).
How the returning actors and the newcomers share these roles — whether through multiverse mechanics, time shifts, or something else — remains unconfirmed. What is clear is that Marvel is building a mutant franchise on a scale the Fox-era films never had the infrastructure to attempt, and it is doing so with a director, writers, and a cast that signal serious intent.
