Despite a sharp decline in popularity and quality after ‘X-Men: The Last Stand’ and ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine,’ Fox’s Marvel mutant franchise has been on an upswing ever since ‘X-Men: First Class’ was released. Now, Bryan Singer is back in charge and there are big plans in store for Professor X, Magneto, Mystique, Wolverine, and the rest of the gang with projects like ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’, ‘X-Force’, ‘Deadpool’, and ‘Gambit’ currently in the pipeline. However, it looks like the studio is looking to expand even more by heading to the small screen.
According to a report from TV Insider, Fox chairmen Gary Newman and Dana Walden revealed during their TCA press tour that they’re developing a TV show featuring the X-Men. But the jump from movie theaters to your living room every week won’t be easy for 20th Century Fox since Marvel Entertainment, who is owned by competitor Disney, has to give their blessing before the children of the atom can join the Batman prequel series ‘Gotham’ on the network. Knowing that there are still hurdles to conquer with this project, Newman shares where they are on the series currently:
“It’s in negotiations. We’re cautiously optimistic, we had a good meeting with them. That will not be on a fast track creatively. This is just the deal, now we have to find the creative.”
Although, that soon changed when The Hollywood Reporter chimed in shortly after the news broke and revealed that ‘24’ producers Evan Katz and Manny Coto are having preliminary talks to adapt the legendary Marvel Comic for television and act as showrunners for the series. Former ‘Star Trek 3’ writers Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne also lined up to co-create and write the show. But of course, these people can only get involved if Fox can work something with Marvel, who have their own live action series to worry about with ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ and ‘Agent Carter’ on ABC now and ‘Daredevil’, ‘AKA Jessica Jones’, ‘Iron Fist’, ‘Luke Cage’, and ‘The Defenders’ on Netflix soon.
As we all know, Marvel Studios has a pretty intricate plan for their characters, so it’s hard to imagine that they’d give the go ahead for some rogue (See what I did there?) programming. But now that we’re living in a post-Sony hack world where talks between Sony and Marvel to have Spider-Man in ‘Captain America: Civil War’ or ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ were exposed, anything can happen.
So do you think that the House of Ideas will actually give Fox the green light to develop an ‘X-Men’ television series? What do you think about the names currently attached to the project? Do you see this series taking place within the continuity of the films? And which group of mutants do you hope to star in this show if it ever makes it? Sound off in the comments below.
