Deadline reports Ben Wang (Karate Kid: Legends, American Born Chinese) is in talks to play Bobby Drake/Iceman in the MCU’s X-Men reboot. Wang, 29, purportedly beat out Gabriel LaBelle (The Fabelmans), Jackson Kelly (The Body), and Rhenzy Feliz (The Penguin) for the part of the X-Men’s frosty longtime member in the film, which is being directed by Jake Schreier (Thunderbolts*) for a release in 2028.
Wang, who is a Chinese-born American, would become the second actor to play Iceman on film, following Shawn Ashmore (who portrayed him in the 2000-06 trilogy, and 2014’s Days of Future Past), and the first Asian version of the character. At the time of writing, the only other person of color who’s been cast in the film is Maya Boyd, who will play Ororo Munroe/Storm.
Since Ashmore played the part, the character of Iceman was revealed to be gay in the comics. Whether this will be the case in the movie remains to be seen, but it would add some further diversity to its onscreen cast; however, it should be noted that Kit Connor and Inde Navarrete, who are respectively playing Scott Summers/Cyclops and Anna Marie/Rogue, are both bisexual.
Wang previously worked with frequent MCU director Destin Daniel Cretton (who introduced Sadie Sink‘s Jean Grey in Spider-Man: Brand New Day) on Disney+’s American Born Chinese (2023), and newly cast Black Panther David Jonsson on The Long Walk (2025). His upcoming projects include The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, due out in theaters on November 20.
X-Men, which will also star Sink as Grey, Christopher Abbott as Professor X, Samara Weaving as Emma Frost, Adam Driver as Nathaniel Milbury, and Asa Germann as Angel, will be released on May 5, 2028. In the meantime, the original film incarnation of the X-Men, led by the late Patrick Stewart‘s Charles Xavier, will return to theaters in Avengers: Doomsday on December 18.
