Ben Wang‘s career has turned into a run of handovers. Studios give him franchises that were famous before he was, and he becomes the new face: the Karate Kid lead standing beside Ralph Macchio and Jackie Chan, an arena tribute in the Hunger Games prequel, a part in the Mean Girls reboot. Now Marvel wants to give him something older than all of them: Bobby Drake, one of the five original mutants Stan Lee and Jack Kirby sent out in the very first X-Men comic.

Wang has entered talks to play Iceman in Marvel Studios’ X-Men reboot, Deadline reported, and Variety and others followed. The deal has not closed, and Marvel could not be reached for comment. Deadline also heard, without confirming it, that Gabriel LaBelle, Jackson Kelly and Rhenzy Feliz were among the actors who tested for the part.

Who is Ben Wang

Wang was born in Beijing and moved to the United States with his mother when he was six. He grew up in Northfield, Minnesota, and studied musical theater at New York University. His first major screen role was a single episode of MacGyver in 2021. Two years later Disney+ cast him as Jin Wang, the high school lead of American Born Chinese, the adaptation of Gene Luen Yang’s graphic novel, and as Bo in the basketball film Chang Can Dunk.

The handovers began after that. He appeared in the 2024 Mean Girls reboot, and that February he was announced as Li Fong, the new lead of Karate Kid: Legends opposite Macchio and Chan. CinemaCon named him its Star of Tomorrow in 2025, ahead of that film’s release. He followed it with Francis Lawrence’s adaptation of Stephen King‘s The Long Walk, plus David Wain’s comedy Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass and Will Ropp’s SXSW comedy Brian. Deadline sums up the rise in one line: he has booked one major studio role after another.

Each of those jobs asked the same thing of him: step into a story an audience already owns and make it feel current. The next one opens on November 20 in the United States. In The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping he plays Wyatt Callow, a tribute from District 12 who goes into the arena alongside Joseph Zada’s Haymitch Abernathy. After that come the sixth and final season of Apple TV’s For All Mankind and two independent films, Kate Must Die and Admissions.

The youngest X-Man, played by one of the oldest in the class

Iceman has always been the kid of the founding team. In the comics Bobby Drake is the youngest of the original five and self-conscious about it. He first appeared covered in snow, and only later took on the ice form fans know. Collider describes him as the joker of a team that can turn very serious very quickly, laid-back enough to be underestimated, which tends to be a mistake.

Wang is 29. ComicBook.com points out that this makes him older than most of the actors cast as the founding team so far, and some readers under Deadline’s story complained that he would look older than Cyclops. It is a familiar gap. Screen teenagers are often played by actors well into their twenties, and Wang was in his mid-twenties when he played a high school student in American Born Chinese. What Marvel seems to want here is less a literal age than someone who can carry a role fans have already seen.

Fans have seen this one before. Shawn Ashmore played Iceman in Fox’s X-Men films from 2000 to 2014, through X-Men, X2, The Last Stand and Days of Future Past. On the page, the character has moved on since then: an April 2015 issue, All-New X-Men #40, revealed that the original Bobby Drake was a closeted gay man, and he came out. ComicBook.com notes that nothing so far indicates whether Marvel plans to bring that storyline to the screen.

Four of the founding five, with an asterisk

Several headlines treat the casting as done. Collider says Wang “officially joins” the film, although its own article says the deal has not closed, and ComicBook.com says Marvel has completed the original team on the strength of a report about talks. The four-of-five count also depends on it: with Wang, the reboot would have Kit Connor‘s Cyclops, Sadie Sink‘s Jean Grey and Asa Germann’s Angel. Beast is still missing on the record. ComicBook.com calls Peter Claffey confirmed, ComicBookMovie.com calls him the frontrunner, and MovieWeb says Marvel has not announced him and no trade outlet has backed the report.

The rest of the cast fits the pattern SlashFilm describes. Marvel is building the team mostly from emerging actors, partly to keep costs down, and Adam Driver is the exception. Kevin Feige revealed much of the cast at D23 in August, after Sink first appeared as Jean Grey in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Christopher Abbott plays Professor X, Driver plays Mister Sinister, Samara Weaving plays Emma Frost, Inde Navarrette plays Rogue and Maya Boyd plays Storm. Wang’s Long Walk co-star David Jonsson is also part of Marvel’s next wave: he stars in Black Panther III, per MovieWeb.

Jake Schreier, who directed Thunderbolts*, is making X-Men from a script by his Beef collaborator Lee Sung Jin and Joanna Calo, with Feige producing. It is the team’s first reboot since Fox’s X-Men: Dark Phoenix in 2019 and its first outing under Marvel Studios. The film is set for May 5, 2028.

In the 1963 comic, Bobby Drake was the boy the rest of the team had to look after. If the deal closes, Marvel will give him to an actor who has spent the last three years walking into other people’s franchises.

Tags: Marvel Studios, X-Men, superhero movies, Ben Wang, Iceman