Casting for Marvel Studios’ upcoming X-Men movie continues to heat up. Or, in this case, cool down. Ben Wang, star of Karate Kid: Legends, The Long Walk, and the upcoming Hunger Games movie, is in talks to play Bobby Drake, aka Iceman.
Deadline broke the news of the casting, which has not yet been made official. The film, which is set for release on May 5, 2028, already features Sadie Sink as Jean Grey, Kit Connor as Cyclops, Christopher Abbott as Professor X, Samara Weaving as Emma Frost, Inde Navarrette as Rogue, Maya Boyd as Storm, and Adam Driver as Nathaniel Milbury. One might have assumed that was the extent of the team and its villain but alas, it’s not.
In the previous films, Iceman was played by Shawn Ashmore, who last reprised the role in 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past. The character was one of the original X-Men, though, going back to 1963’s X-Men #1.
And while Wang is not yet a household name, he certainly deserves it. He’s by far the best part of the very, very bad Karate Kid sequel and is one of the standouts in the stacked cast of The Long Walk. In this month’s The Hunger Games: The Sunset on the Reaping, he plays Wyatt Callow, a tribute who loves to gamble.
X-Men is directed by Jake Schreier from a script by Lee Sung Jin and Joanna Calo. Filming is likely to start in the coming months.
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