Jean Grey herself just gave Kane Parsons the endorsement Marvel Studios should be paying attention to.
Famke Janssen, who played Jean Grey across five X-Men movies including The Wolverine, sat for a 90-minute masterclass at Malta’s Mediterrane Film Festival on June 25, and when Vanity Fair‘s John Ross asked her whether the Backrooms filmmaker should get a shot at directing an X-Men installment, her answer was an unequivocal yes, per THR.
Janssen praises Parsons and Curry Barker
Janssen told the Malta crowd she considers what Parsons and Obsession director Curry Barker have done to be a paradigm shift, pointing out that both built their own audiences on YouTube, never went begging to a studio for money, and made wildly creative movies for next to nothing that found massive audiences.
She also made a point of noting that both films are analog, practical productions rather than AI-driven or CGI-heavy ones, singling out the real practical labyrinth sets Parsons built for Backrooms.
“Backrooms is like Stanley Kubrick on crack,” Janssen said.
Asked about Parsons directing X-Men, Janssen went further, arguing their success opens a door for filmmakers to reject the old-fashioned system of making $300 million movies. “Absolutely,” she responded when asked if Parsons should direct X-Men.
The Doomsday snub is still fresh
The Malta comments come just days after Janssen said Marvel made a mistake by not bringing her back as Jean Grey for Avengers: Doomsday, remarks she made at Spacecon 2026 before touching down in Valletta.
While the Doomsday comments didn’t come up in Malta, Ross did ask whether she would ever return to the franchise, and Janssen said she remains open to reprising any role when there is something good to play, pointing to her track record of revisiting characters across X-Men, Taken, and Hemlock Grove.
Audiences already voted
Janssen is only saying out loud what the box office has been screaming.
Backrooms is heading back to theaters because audiences showed up for a movie built on vision and practical craft instead of a quarter-billion-dollar committee product.
Marvel is staring down an X-Men reboot that has to feel different from everything that came before it. Handing it to a filmmaker who built a horror phenomenon from a YouTube channel would accomplish that overnight.
The old model keeps producing $300 million movies audiences shrug at. The new one keeps producing hits. Even Jean Grey can see it.
