‘Dark Phoenix’ Director Simon Kinberg Reveals Which Marvel Hero He Wants in an X-Men Movie

In March, Disney completed its acquisition of 20th Century Fox, the studio that produces the X-Men movies. The acquisition puts the film rights to Marvel’s mutants in the same place as most of Marvel’s other characters. That means that the potential for a crossover between the X-Men and the Marvel Cinematic Universe heroes is stronger than ever. Simon Kinberg directs Dark Phoenix, the next (and, many assume, last) of Fox’s X-Men movies. He’s also a longtime producer on the franchise. Kinberg is out promoting CBS All Access’s reboot of The Twilight Zone, which he produced with Jordan Peele. He switched gears to reveal which Marvel character he’d most like to see meet the cinematic X-Men.

“I’m a fan of so many of those MCU characters,” Kinberg told Variety. “I guess I would say probably either somebody from Wakanda or Iron Man. I mean, I love [Robert Downey Jr.]. I’ve worked with him. I love what he does with that character. I feel he created the tonal template for the MCU with the first Iron Man movie, and so the notion Iron Man popping up in X-Men or Iron Man interacting with Deadpool is pretty exciting.”

Iron Man is a safe pick considering Downey’s star power, but the note about Wakanda is interesting. As Marvel Comics fans may know, the X-Men leader Storm has a history with T’Challa, the Black Panther and king of Wakanda. The two knew each other when they were young and they resumed that relationship later in their lives. Storm married T’Challa and became his queen. The marriage ended with an annulment for many reasons, but Storm and T’Challa rekindled that romance in recent issues of Black Panther.

Some fans would like to see more crossover within the X-Men films, with Deadpool teaming up with the core X-Men cast. “Well, we did a little bit of that in Deadpool 2,” Kinberg said. “Like I shot a scene for Deadpool 2 where [the X-Men] pop up. In Deadpool 1, we had a reference where Ryan [Reynolds]’s talking about the messed up timelines of the X-Men movies. So I think there’ll be a lot of mixing and merging now and I’m all for it.”

Which Marvel Cinematic Universe hero do you want to see team up with the X-Men? Let us know what you think in the comments. Dark Phoenix opens in theaters on June 7th.

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