For filmmaker Jake Schreier (“Robot Frank,” “Paper Towns”), the action does not carry itself. That idea sat at the center of his recent appearance on The Playlist’s Bingeworthy podcast, where a conversation about “Beef” kept opening onto “Thunderbolts*” and, eventually, Marvel’s “X-Men.” Schreier, who directs and executive produces the second season of the Netflix and A24 anthology, has already brought “Beef” creator Lee Sung Jin and “Thunderbolts*” co-writer and “The Bear” co-showrunner Joanna Calo into the rewrite process on “X-Men.”
Talking through the overlap between “Beef,” “Thunderbolts*,” and the wider Marvel machine, Schreier said, “But I think that with any of these stories, you know, whether it’s ‘Beef’ or any of the Marvel stuff, I mean, they succeed because of the personal, they succeed because of the characters and because you can connect with something even if it’s on this grand kind of canvas. So it’s always about finding some way into it that feels like something people can relate to and not just the kind of the spectacle of the thing.”
Asked how he found himself back in Marvel’s orbit with “X-Men,” Schreier said the interest had been there for a while.
“Well, certainly like obviously of the things that are out there—it was something I loved so much as a kid,” he said. “So, I mean, you’re always kind of, you don’t want to bother anyone around in the hallways, but you’re always the hand is kind of subtly raised if it’s out there. And I think just timing-wise, it worked out.” He continued, “And it’s an incredible opportunity and a huge responsibility that I don’t take lightly. But I think we all just worked so well together that it’s really fun to be back in there working with those folks on a new one.”
When our pod host brought up how the best versions of these “X-Men” stories are often about characters figuring out who they are as people, especially as young adults, Schreier took that straight into what he has been finding in the comics.
“Well, that’s kind of the fun of just going back and rereading so much of it is just, like watching the cartoon growing up and like, it really does get into the ideological stuff a lot, and that’s such an endemic part of what ‘X-Men’ is about,” he said. “But when you go and read those early runs, it’s good to remember how much of it is this kind of young soap opera as well. And much of the kind of division within the team often starts from personal rifts and things that are going on. And so like just trying to make sure that it has all of the qualities of what makes ‘X-Men’ so incredible and what it is, you know?”
Schreier also touched on how “Thunderbolts*” found its own shape. “It was part of the pitch. Like when I came on, that idea that that was going to get unveiled at the end was already part of it,” he said of the ‘New Avengers’ reveal. “The idea to do it as like an actual title flop and like a reveal, like, no, that we added later.” He added, “I think that was my first, like the last meeting, where before I got hired, I sort of said as a joke, ‘Oh, you should actually just put an asterisk on it.’ I think it was for like one marketing thing, not the actual title. And everyone just sort of left. And then I think we forgot about it for a while, and then we came back to it.”
“Beef” Season 2 premieres April 16 on Netflix. “X-Men” remains in development, with Lee Sung Jin and Joanna Calo working on the current draft (and apparently they intend to have a series of films, duh). More from this podcast soon. —Additional reporting by Mike DeAngelo.
