On July 20, Kevin Feige sat down for Josh Horowitz's Happy Sad Confused podcast to promote Spider-Man: Brand New Day and said something unusually candid about the one actor Marvel keeps failing to sign. "It's no secret we'd like to [work with Driver]," Feige told Horowitz. "But it's a tradition to Zoom with him and then he passes. That's a long-lived tradition. He couldn't be more cordial."
Feige did not name specific roles. Social media speculation pointed to the upcoming X-Men reboot, with Driver's name circulating in connection to Magneto and Mr. Sinister. No casting was announced.
The Practice
Adam Driver has been working steadily in film since 2011, but his career since 2018 reads like a deliberate argument against a certain kind of Hollywood success. In BlacKkKlansman, directed by Spike Lee, he played a Jewish detective going undercover alongside a Black colleague infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan. The following year, Noah Baumbach's Marriage Story gave him the role of Charlie, a theater director mid-divorce, which earned Driver an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. Both films occupied the same territory: small, specific, morally complex work that resists reduction to a franchise pitch.
The pattern held. Annette (2021), Leos Carax's sung-through fable, cast Driver as a stand-up comedian whose infant daughter is born with a supernatural gift. White Noise (2022), Baumbach's DeLillo adaptation, put him in suburban dread. Ferrari (2023), directed by Michael Mann, had him as Enzo Ferrari navigating marital collapse and corporate crisis across the summer of 1957. Three different directors, three different registers, the same commitment to the kind of performance that doesn't come with a sequel attached.
The Collaborators
A partial list of directors Driver has worked with since 2018: Spike Lee, Noah Baumbach, Leos Carax, Michael Mann, Francis Ford Coppola. He played the Emperor's enforcer across three Star Wars films, which establishes that he is not opposed to scale. He has said he remains interested in returning to that franchise, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
What he appears to be opposed to is the Marvel approach to character, which requires actors to be available for a decade and willing to share scenes with whoever else has signed. Feige noted Driver is always polite about it. "He couldn't be more cordial" is a strange thing to say about an actor you want but cannot book. It implies a negotiation conducted in good faith, repeatedly, without a deal. The failure is Marvel's. Driver has been busy.
The Ongoing Negotiation
Feige expressed optimism that the Zoom tradition might one day end differently, according to The Hollywood Reporter. He did not specify on what terms. What has become clear, over a decade of the same pattern, is that Driver is choosing the version of the career where the director decides what he does next. That has meant Cannes, not Comic-Con. It has meant Oscar season, not opening weekend tracking. The X-Men reboot will find its cast. Driver will find his next project. These are not the same process.
