Marvel & Warners/DC have a sizable number of their comic-based properties either on our small screens already, or in development – do Agent Carter, Agents of SHIELD, Arrow, Constantine, Daredevil, Flash, Gotham, Iron Fist, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Powers or Supergirl ring a bell? Well ring it louder because Bleeding Cool are reporting that Fox, rights holders of Marvel’s X-Men universe, are deep in development on a live-action TV series based on everyone’s favourite mutants.
Unfortunately that’s about all the detail there is at the moment, other than there being interest in the series from broadcasters. The closest we’ve come to seeing X-Men universe on our small screens in anything other than animated form was with the Mutant X TV series produced by Marvel in 2001 which ran for three seasons before being cancelled; and dogged by a lawsuit (which was eventually settled) by Fox against Marvel for infringing on their rights to the X-Men property as they deemed the series to be too similar to the X-Men.
As Simon Kinberg (producer of X-Men Days of Future Past and the upcoming X-Men Apocalypse) told Collider way back in the mists of time, April, about the possibility of an X-Men TV series:
“We’re still in this place of figuring out what the future of the franchise will be, but when you look at S.H.I.E.L.D. to some extent and what Marvel is doing now with Daredevil and other shows on Netflix, it makes sense to tell some of these stories in TV partly because there’s just not enough screens to do all these characters, and also because the serialized format of comic books is better suited for TV. Because that’s it, every week you come back to the same characters different story, and in comic books every week it’s the same characters, different story.
I think what [Fox is] seeing now is with the proliferation of new kinds of visual and special effects, there’s a way to make these stories that doesn’t cost $300 million every time you have to make a huge movie.”
The X-Men universe is certainly vast and has a great many characters and, especially, teams to draw upon for a TV series – X-Force, X-Factor, New Mutants, New X-Men, Young X-Men to name a few. While there are no details regarding whether or not the movie and TV universes will connect, I’d be surprised if series revolves around the characters from the movies or that they appear in anything other than cameo form.
Who/What would you like to see from an X-Men TV series? My hope is for New X-Men because I have a serious crush on X-23, Laura Kinney – a female clone of Wolverine and the biggest badass around. No Darryn, not Squirrel Girl, no.
Last Updated: October 7, 2014
Alien Emperor Trevor
October 7, 2014 at 15:03
X-23 FTW!