James Marsden Comments on Possibly Joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Nearly a decade before the Marvel Cinematic Universe launched, one of the biggest events in the history of Marvel Comics was the release of X-Men in 2000. The characters had always been popular among fans, though remained somewhat unknown to the general public, until the release of the film increased the mutants’ popularity immensely. Until earlier this year, there has been a clear delineation between the X-Men franchise and the MCU, due to different studios owning rights to the characters, though with Disney having absorbed the X-Men, it’s just a matter of time before they debut in the MCU. When that happens, former Cyclops actor James Marsden isn’t ruling out a return.

“Sure, I’d be down. I think that world, there just are no rules. You can do whatever you want,” Marsden shared with ComicBook.com when asked about his interest in reprising his role for the MCU. “If there’s some iteration down the line where we’re involved…that’s been a special thing to be a part of for a good period of my life and I love those fans and I love playing that character so, yeah, I’d be totally open to that.”

Marsden played Cyclops in the original three X-Men movies, with his character getting killed in X-Men: The Last Stand. The next film in the series, X-Men: First Class, took place decades before the original films, seemingly preventing the original cast from appearing in the series’ future. With X-Men: Days of Future Past, the characters traveled through time and altered the future, allowing Marsden to have a cameo as the character in the film’s finale.

Tye Sheridan took over the role of young Cyclops in X-Men: Apocalypse and X-Men: Dark Phoenix, though it’s unlikely he’ll make his way into the MCU, with Dark Phoenix director Simon Kinberg seemingly confirming that this iteration of the heroes were done.

“From the beginning of conceiving what we were going to do with this film and writing it, which was three plus years ago, so long before there was a Disney merger, I felt like this was the natural culmination for this cycle of X-Men movies,” Kinberg explained to ComicBook.com during an interview at WonderCon. “Because it is seeing this family that you’ve come to love and know for how ever many films, and if you count the originals almost 20 years now, you see that family tested in a whole new way. You see that family start to fall apart in a real way for the first time, ultimately come back together.”

Stay tuned for details on the X-Men’s future in the MCU.

Would you like to see Marsden appear in the MCU? Let us know in the comments below!

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