Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen are set to reprise their X-Men roles in Avengers: Doomsday.

Marvel kicked off a live stream today to announce the long list of actors who will star in the first Avengers film in six years.

The pair will join the Black Panther actors Letitia Wright, Winston Duke and Tenoch Huerta Mejía; Thor’s Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston; Ant-Man’s Paul Rudd; Shang-Chi’s Simu Liu; and Captain America’s Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan.

The stars of this summer’s Fantastic Four reboot will also join, including the Oscar nominee Vanessa Kirby and the Stranger Things actor Joseph Quinn as well as those featured in the upcoming film Thunderbolts, including the Oscar nominee Florence Pugh and David Harbour.

Stewart last played Professor Charles Xavier in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness after being killed off in Logan, while McKellen last played Magneto in X-Men: Days of Future Past. They will be joined by other X-Men stars including Kelsey Grammer, Rebecca Romijn, James Marsden and Alan Cumming.

Channing Tatum, who had been set to lead a standalone Gambit film, will also star, having recently played the role in Deadpool & Wolverine.

Elizabeth Olsen, who plays the Scarlet Witch, recently confirmed that she will not be joining the cast.

At last year’s San Diego Comic-Con, it was revealed that Iron Man star Robert Downey Jr would be joining the film to play the villain Doctor Doom. “New mask. Same task,” Downey Jr said to the crowd. “Boy, I tell you, I like playing complicated characters.”

The film will be directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, who have previously directed four films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Their last film for the studio was Avengers: Endgame in 2019, which made over $2.79bn worldwide.

“The only thing I’ll say about the movie is this: we love villains who think they are the heroes of their own stories,” Joe Russo said in a recent interview. “That’s when they become three-dimensional and when they become more interesting. And when you have an actor like Robert Downey Jr, you have to create a well-shaped, three-dimensional character for the audience. That’s where a lot of our focus is going.”

Their most recent film, The Electric State, landed on Netflix earlier this month to negative reviews. The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw called it “very bland and derivative”.

Earlier this year, Captain America: Brave New World made $401m worldwide after 2023’s The Marvels underperformed with $206m.

Avengers: Doomsday just began production in London and is scheduled for release in May 2026.