X-Men reboot: is Peter Claffey cast as Beast?

Peter Claffey has reportedly been cast as Hank McCoy, also known as Beast, in Marvel Studios' X-Men reboot. That's according to an exclusive from an industry insider at Knight Edge Media. If the report holds up, the MCU's new X-Men team has grown by one, and there's only one more core member left to cast.

The casting news also lands alongside fresh hints about where these new X-Men will first appear. That may not be as early as I thought, even with Jean Grey reportedly set for Avengers: Secret Wars.

Knight Edge Media reports Peter Claffey as Beast in the X-Men reboot

The scoop ran as an exclusive under a headline saying Peter Claffey had been cast as Beast in the Marvel Studios X-Men reboot. The report says the Irish actor has been cast as Hank McCoy. It notes that he rose to fame playing Ser Duncan the Tall in HBO's A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.

The report also mentions Charles Melton. It says Melton dropped out of the running to star as Kakashi Hatake in the live-action Naruto movie, and that he tried to make both projects work but couldn't. It adds that many fans began fan casting Claffey as Beast after Jeff Sneider first rumored him back in April through The InSneider.

Why I take the Knight Edge Media Beast scoop seriously

The insider who wrote the article and is behind this scoop has been a scooper for quite some time. His track record speaks for itself. He's been right on several accounts, and he broke this as an exclusive. To me, that means it comes from one of his most verified sources.

Still, this is one source. I suspect that if there's any truth to it, one of the bigger Hollywood trades, like The Hollywood Reporter or Deadline, will get to this news sometime soon.

Iceman is reportedly the last core X-Men role left to cast

The insider did mention that Marvel is looking at some other roles for the film, such as Moira MacTaggert. But the main casting is close to done. According to multiple sources over the last four or five months, the only character left to cast for the main X-Men in this first reboot film is Iceman.

After that, outside of tertiary characters or an odd side character, this is your cast. It's the original X-Men, with the first five on the team. Other mutants like Rogue are reportedly part of the school but maybe not quite on the team yet. At this point, the main villains are reportedly Emma Frost and Mr. Sinister.

Jean Grey in Avengers: Secret Wars and the theory that it would launch the reboot

Originally, the word was that Jean Grey would show up in Avengers: Secret Wars. That didn't come from an industry insider. It came from the main Hollywood trades right after Sadie Sink was announced for Spider-Man: Brand New Day. When something is this high profile, it's going to get out. The report was that she'd appear as Jean Grey in Brand New Day and show up again in Secret Wars.

On the back of other insider reports, I assumed Secret Wars had effectively become the reboot. At one point, insiders like DanielRPK were pointing to Blade showing up in Secret Wars, which I assumed meant Mahershala Ali. At this point, I think it's safe to say that ship has sailed, and we'll never see him as Blade in the MCU.

I was still holding on to the theory that Secret Wars might serve as the reboot itself, rather than Secret Wars ending and the reboot beginning afterward. That would differ from the jump between the Infinity Saga and the Multiverse Saga. When the Multiverse Saga started, we got a prequel in Black Widow, then Shang-Chi, then Eternals, a run of new characters who weren't present for the major crossover we had just seen.

I assumed Marvel might do it differently this time and give us some of these new characters during Secret Wars. Then, when the X-Men reboot arrived months later, audiences would already be familiar with them, and they wouldn't feel completely new. Some of them would have been through a major crossover event that ends the Multiverse Saga and leads into the next mutant saga.

Christopher Abbott's Professor X comment points to the X-Men waiting for their own film

But maybe not so fast. Christopher Abbott, who's playing Professor X, was reportedly asked about this exact thing: whether there would be sneaky cameos introducing his character in either of the upcoming Avengers films. His answer was: "No, I've got to film the X-Men movie before all of that."

So, while Jean Grey may be part of Avengers: Secret Wars, I think it's safe to say the rest of the new team will be saved and introduced in the X-Men reboot after Secret Wars comes out. I've maintained that I'm pretty sure most, if not all, of the returning Fox X-Men are going to perish during Avengers: Doomsday, with Marvel's plan being to move them off the board.

I thought Marvel might introduce some new members during Secret Wars. Instead, it may give Secret Wars a full year and a downbeat, so that when the new X-Men team shows up right after, there's been some time in between.

Secret Wars filming dates and Sadie Sink's double duty

At the very least, the logistics will get complicated. From what I've heard, Avengers: Secret Wars has pushed primary filming back to February 2027. That gives the team much less time to film and edit than they had for Avengers: Doomsday, and it doesn't give them the extra pickup shots a year later. The Russos have said they're deep in the final process for Doomsday, and you can see how there isn't enough bandwidth to go into both projects at once.

If Jean Grey is in Secret Wars, Sadie Sink will need to be on set filming that at the same time she needs to be filming the X-Men reboot, which comes out months later in May 2028. So at least for her, next year is going to be very demanding, pulling double duty on both movies.

More likely than not, that's a good reason many of these rebooted X-Men cast members can't and won't show up in Secret Wars. They'll be too busy forging their own path. You can't ask the whole X-Men cast to pull double duty, and among the full ensemble in Secret Wars, it doesn't even feel like that would work. I'm a little worried about where this leaves Secret Wars, in terms of who it will focus on and what it might look like as a film. But there will be a year to talk about that after Doomsday comes out.

Gambit, Colossus and Nightcrawler still have time in the Mutant Saga

If a character you were hoping to see in the X-Men reboot isn't going to be cast or hasn't been cast yet, keep in mind that this is the first of what is probably a lot of X-Men films. There's still plenty of time to cast those characters and bring them into the fold down the road.

I'd assume we'll get no fewer than two X-Men films during the Mutant Saga as it heads into the next crossover, even if that crossover carries an Avengers title like Judgment Day. Who knows how many there will be over the next 20 years? We may be up to X-Men 6 by 2046.