Marvel’s X-Men has its cinematographer, and the confirmation came straight from the source.
Pat Scola has added Marvel Studios’ X-Men to his official portfolio at patscola.com, where the film’s teaser art, the distressed gold X over a 5.5.28 date, now holds the first slot on his homepage, ahead of The Death of Robin Hood and Sing Sing.
MCU Film News flagged the listing early on August 26, and the post cleared 75,000 views within hours.
Scola’s name isn’t new to this production.
Rotten Tomatoes’ updated X-Men explainer already listed him as director of photography alongside production designer Kasra Farahani, which we noted in our story on the end-of-summer filming window.
The difference now is that Scola is saying it himself, with Marvel’s own key art, on the site he uses to book work. A cinematographer doesn’t hang a Marvel Studios poster on his portfolio while he’s still in talks.
Pig, A Quiet Place: Day One, Sing Sing, Death Of Robin Hood: The Résumé
Scola, a member of the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC), is a New York native and Emerson College graduate who came up shooting music videos for The Weeknd and J. Cole before Michael Sarnoski’s Pig (2021) put him on the map.
The Nicolas Cage drama won him the ASC Spotlight Award and a spot on Variety’s 10 Cinematographers to Watch.
He and Sarnoski went from that to A Quiet Place: Day One, Scola’s only studio-scale credit to date, which opened to a franchise-best $53 million and finished at $261 million worldwide on a $67 million budget.
In between came Sing Sing, the A24 prison drama that earned three Oscar nominations, including Best Actor for Colman Domingo (who interestingly enough has been rumored for Professor X).
Scola shot it on Super 16mm Kodak film with vintage Zeiss lenses and mostly available light, in a tall 1.66:1 frame built for close-ups.
His own description of the approach: “In this story the human face was our landscape.”
He went back to 16mm last year for Lurker, the directing debut of Beef and The Bear writer Alex Russell, for a story set entirely inside the smartphone world of celebrity hangers-on.
His newest release is The Death of Robin Hood starring Hugh Jackman, who also interestingly enough, plays Marvel’s Wolverine. The film is Sarnoski’s A24 take on the outlaw’s final days, shot almost entirely on location in Northern Ireland.
The movie didn’t find an audience, and A24 had it on digital by July 28. The photography is a different story, and it’s the reason fans reacting to Scola’s name have been hoping Marvel shoots real locations. The ASC made him a member in August 2025.
Schreier Is Running The Thunderbolts* Playbook Again
Thunderbolts* was sold on its crew as much as its cast.
Marvel cut a whole trailer around the cinematographer of The Green Knight (Andrew Droz Palermo), the production designer of Hereditary (Grace Yun), the editor of Minari (Harry Yoon), and the composers of Everything Everywhere All at Once (Son Lux).
Jake Schreier told Variety the marching order from Kevin Feige was to “make it different” and do it in camera wherever possible.
Scola is that hire for X-Men: two A24 pictures out of his last three, film stock over digital, real locations over volume stages.
The X-Men producer designer, Kasra Farahani, for his part, built Loki‘s TVA (teased at D23) and the retro-future New York of The Fantastic Four: First Steps, and IMDb also credits him on Avengers: Doomsday.
That’s the pairing: a DP who shoots faces in natural light and a designer who can go as big as a Mister Sinister lab requires.
The Beef connection is worth noticing, too. Schreier directed Beef, which was created by X-Men co-writer Lee Sung Jin, while fellow X-Men co-writer Joanna Calo also came from The Bear. Scola’s most recent 16mm feature also marked the directing debut of a writer from those same creative circles.
Marvel’s X-Men is being built by one circle of people who already know each other’s work.
It also matches what the people making it keep saying.
Kit Connor called the movie “a really different version, a different take” from the Fox films, and Lee Sung Jin said he and Calo are leading with what makes these characters relatable before the world-ending stakes.
A 16mm, faces-first cinematographer is how you shoot that movie. This is Scola’s first superhero film, and that is the point of hiring him.
The Crew Is Landing On Schedule
A Filmbase crew listing put the X-Men shoot at the end of summer, at Pinewood or in Ireland.
Adam Driver revealed his Nathaniel Milbury casting from a Pinewood soundstage at D23, and Avengers: Secret Wars is on a five-week hiatus at the same studio until the end of September.
Department heads putting the poster on their websites is what the last weeks before cameras look like. And if Ireland is the option Marvel takes, Scola just spent an entire shoot on location in Northern Ireland.
Marvel’s X-Men opens May 5, 2028. Jake Schreier directs from a script by Lee Sung Jin and Joanna Calo, with Sadie Sink, Kit Connor, Christopher Abbott, Samara Weaving, Inde Navarrette, Maya Boyd, and Adam Driver. Everything confirmed so far is in our X-Men hub.
