Ben Wang in Talks to Play Iceman in Marvel’s X-Men

Marvel’s new X-Men may have found its Iceman. Ben Wang has entered talks to play Bobby Drake in Marvel Studios’ X-Men, Deadline reported Monday. The deal is not closed, and Marvel has not commented, so file this under “very likely” rather than “official” for now.

Wang is best known for American Born Chinese, Karate Kid: Legends and this fall’s The Long Walk, and he’s about to be a lot more visible: he plays District 12 tribute Wyatt Callow in The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, which opens later this month. According to Deadline, Gabriel LaBelle (The Fabelmans), Jackson Kelly and Rhenzy Feliz (The Penguin) also tested for the part.

Four of the original five, now accounted for

Iceman is one of the five mutants on the cover of The X-Men #1 back in 1963, and Marvel has made no secret of wanting the whole founding class in this movie. If Wang closes, the original lineup looks like this: Kit Connor as Cyclops, Sadie Sink as Jean Grey, Asa Germann as Angel and Wang as Iceman. Beast is the one seat still officially empty, though A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms star Peter Claffey has been widely rumored for Hank McCoy. Nothing on that from Marvel yet.

They’d join the cast Marvel unveiled at D23 in August: Christopher Abbott as Professor X, Adam Driver as Mister Sinister, Samara Weaving as Emma Frost, Inde Navarrette as Rogue and Maya Boyd as Storm. Sink’s Jean Grey was revealed in Spider-Man: Brand New Day over the summer.

Jake Schreier (Thunderbolts*) directs, with Lee Sung Jin and Joanna Calo among the writers and Kevin Feige producing. Production is expected to start in the UK in early 2027, and X-Men is dated for May 5, 2028.

Why this Bobby Drake is interesting

Two things jump out. First, the age math. Bobby has almost always been written as the youngest of the original X-Men, the kid who gets underestimated right up until he freezes a building. Wang is 29, which makes him older than most of his would-be teammates. That’s not a problem so much as a hint about how Marvel is pitching this team, and it fits a Bobby who has been at the mansion a while rather than a brand-new recruit.

Second, this is a different Bobby Drake than the one Shawn Ashmore played across four Fox films, and a different one than the blond kid from Long Island on the page. Marvel has been building this team around who the characters are rather than how they were drawn in 1963, and Wang fits that pattern. What matters more is that the comics have given Bobby one of the richest arcs of any founding X-Man over the last decade, from an Omega-level power reveal to his 2015 coming-out, and there is finally a movie with room to use some of it.

Deadline has a strong track record on this film’s casting, and Marvel confirmed most of its earlier scoops at D23. We’ll update when the deal closes or Marvel makes it official.

Featured image: Ben Wang at CinemaCon 2025, photo by Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 3.0); Iceman (2017) #1 cover art by Kevin Wada, Marvel.