u/namelessfdr

https://deadline.com/2026/06/lee-sung-jin-beef-x-men-interview-1236950632/

New interview with Lee Sung Jin with a couple of X-Men questions at the end.

DEADLINE: Before I let you go, you’ve taken a stab at Marvel before and now you’re doing the next X-Men movie. What is it like to do something that has those kinds of parameters after the freedom that you have on Beef?

LEE: Truthfully, it’s same parameters on this project, which is so exciting. I’d say there were actually more parameters on Thunderbolts because it was plugging into an existing arc and existing characters, whereas with X-Men, Kevin [Feige] just wants to take a big swing and start anew, not be beholden to any of the movies that have come before. And Jake Schreier has such a clear vision in terms of wanting to get back to character first, and to what is exciting about those early [Chris] Claremont-run comics, which was all about team dynamics. There were a lot of soapy elements to those comics. We’ve been in the room every day together. Kevin and Louis [D’Esposito] are so dialed in, and they have such incredible instincts that it’s been fun to just blue-sky.

I’m such a big fan of that IP of the comics. My dad and I, every Saturday morning, used to watch the show on television, so to be able to look around this Marvel conference room and have every X-Men character on the board and be able to spitball and freestyle on, “What about this person? “it’s so emboldening, because you’re like, “Oh, wow, this isn’t going to be a safe movie. This is actually going to be a really exciting new take.”

DEADLINE: What do you feel beholden to when you write something like that?

LEE: It’s, “Would younger me want to run to the movie theater to watch this? Are we honoring all the amazing work that the comics set up? Are we playing it safe? Are we pushing things?” It’s just trying to look at my childhood self, who loved these characters so much, and making sure we’re doing right by him and all the other fans that love X-Men.

The art is so stark and detailed, an expressionist fever dream.