Well, they could make a saga out of it, but it requires the kind of storytelling that Hollywood doesn't have the imagination or the balls for.
Oh, and as I stated earlier, it was actually the Fantastic Four that found Jean.
They were called in about a mysterious phenomenon in the Atlantic ocean involving a cocoon lying on the ocean floor that was creating havoc with naval operations and shipping lines(I think, I can't really remember). Reed, Sue, Johnny, and Ben were all called in and this thing was creating a tremendously disruptive force which turned out to be telekinetic in origin. There was also some kind of signal being transmitted from the rock, as if it were crying out for help(or to stay away) and ultimately Reed managed to stop the problem. The issue ended with a close-up of the cocoon and the image of a red-headed woman inside whispering, "Scott," before the issue ended.
To be continued.
My jaw dropped to the floor. I was like, WTF??? Is that who I think it is? Yep, when the Navy pulled the cocoon to the surface and opened it, there was Jean. Reed and the others asked her what happened, and Jean told them about how the Phoenix Force came to her when the spacecraft she was piloting to allow the other X-Men to escape was about to crash into the ocean. The Phoenix Force needed an avatar on Earth, and Reed surmised that it made a doppelganger of Jean that copied Jean's memories and DNA perfectly and put Jean safely in a cocoon in the ocean. The Phoenix Force copied Jean so perfectly that her love for Scott was replicated in the doppelganger, which compelled the Phoenix-Jean to sacrifice itself rather than risk hurting or killing Scott. Meanwhile, the real Jean slept at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean until the Fantastic Four woke her up. This effectively retconned nearly a decade of X-Men history.
And this was mostly due to Marvel wanted to reunite the original X-Men team(Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Beast, Iceman, Angel) for their own new comic series, X-Factor, which was separate from X-Men. The X-Men at that time were off-planet and presumed dead. Cyclops had left the team after unsuccessfully trying to reclaim his leadership role from Storm, but lost a battle with her to determine who should be leader. This was total bull
because Storm had lost her powers and there was no way she could've taken Scott.
Beast had long since left the X-Men for the Avengers, and Hank had been an Avenger all through the 1970's, until he teamed up with his other former X-Men, Iceman and Angel, to form a new Defenders team which never really took. So Jean's return was the perfect time to get the original band back together.
But this is par for the course for Marvel, because the Avengers found Captain America the same way. Cap was supposed to be dead in the 1960's after the All Winners' Squad ended, but Marvel really wanted to bring him back, so they had The Avengers(Hank Pym, Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Thor, and Janet Van Dyne) discover Cap frozen in suspended animation in the Arctic Circle and thaw him out. Hey, at least they're consistent.