Janelle Monáe Reveals Dream Marvel Role

With Fox’s X-Men film series essentially at an end and the rights heading to Marvel Studios, many fans and stars are expressing interest in their dream comic book roles and Grammy nominee Janelle Monáe has revealed she has her eye on playing the part of iconic superheroine Storm.

In an interview with Empire Magazine, the 34-year-old singer-songwriter and actress discussed working on her latest album in Atlanta at the same time as Ryan Coogler and cast filming the critical and commercial darling Black Panther and that in hanging out with the stars and co-writer/director, she’s definitely had conversations with him as to possibly joining the MCU.

“One of my dreams has always been to play Storm,” Monáe said. “I don’t know if she comes in Black Panther, but it would be a dream to have her in it. I don’t know where they are with that. A lot of women have played Storm and they’ve done an exceptional job, and I would love to be in that line of artists and get to do Storm justice.”

In the comics, Ororo Munroe, aka Storm, was a major romantic link to King T’Challa, even marrying him at some point, whilst Nakia, who was played in the film by Lupita Nyong’o, eventually became a villain for the titular hero. However, with Coogler choosing to depict Nakia in a much more heroic light and major departure from her comics, chances are that should Storm be introduced in the upcoming Black Panther sequel, it’s unlikely she’d be a romantic interest to the African hero.

After nearly a decade of living on the small screen in various animated series, Storm finally made her live-action debut on the big screen with 2000’s X-Men, seeing Oscar winner Halle Berry in the role for the first three installments and 2014’s Days of Future Past, the fourth “present day” installment and second prequel film. The role would then pass on to Alexandra Shipp in 2016’s Apocalypse, with the 28-year-old star reprising the character in last year’s derided Dark Phoenix, which was essentially the final installment in Fox’s X-Men franchise.

Now that the rights to the mutant team lie in Marvel’s hands, it’s currently unclear how soon mutants will be introduced to the MCU, with Kevin Feige having announced at last year’s San Diego Comic-Con that a film focused on them was in development, but not specifying a timeline for when they would make their debut. With Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness on the way, some believe there’s a possibility it will act as a conduit for introducing audiences and the MCU world to the arrival of mutants. Not to mention with Ryan Reynolds currently working with Marvel to bring Deadpool into the fold for a third film and Josh Boone still holding out hope that New Mutants‘ success could result in him getting to make his planned trilogy, the future looks bright for the X-Men characters coming to the MCU very soon.

(Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)