After the news that Samara Weaving was in line for the Emma Frost role in the upcoming X-Men movie, it now looks like Marvel Studios has found its Scott Summers. Sources tell Deadline that Kit Connor is the choice for the mutant Cyclops.
Similar to the Weaving situation, where director Jake Schreier and Marvel president Kevin Feige met with a number of candidates, sources say the studio ultimately landed on Connor last week to become the latest actor to don the Cyclops visor.
Marvel and reps for Connor could not be reached for comment on the casting.
While James Bond has had everyone’s attention this summer, the most active casting process has been who will play the new team of Mutants. Following meetings and auditions over the last couple months, sources say a small group of actors tested after the July 4 holiday.
Summers has been one of the cornerstones of the X-Men comics, first appearing in a 1963 The X-Men from Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. The character has always been seen as the captain of the team of Mutants, best known for the powerful beams of energy emitted from his eyes that he controls through a visor and various sunglasses.
The character has been played by two actors in the past: James Marsden, who portrayed him in three X-Men films in the 2000s, and Tye Sheridan, who played him in multiple X-Men films in the 2010s. (Marsden is already confirmed to reprise the role in the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday pic bowing in December.)
This latest development is sure to excite fans of the franchise, who have been begging for a new X-Men movie since Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox and its library in 2019. The X-Men universe was by far the most popular and profitable Marvel IP that Fox controlled, spawning seven films and a successful Wolverine spinoff franchise that produced three more.
The new project gained momentum last spring when Schreier was tapped to direct, followed by Beef creator Lee Sung Jin and The Bear co-creator Joanna Calo hired to pen the script.
Connor’s star has been on the rise since his scene-stealing role in the Netflix series Heartstopper, recently reprising the role in a movie spinoff Heartstopper Forever. Following that, he caught the eye of director Alex Garland, who cast him in his A24 war film Warfare as well as the upcoming video game adaptation Elden Ring.
From Deadline.com