Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Fox In Talks With Marvel For Live Action X-Men TV Series

The X-Men franchise has been doing quite well in Fox's hands as of now. With three movies coming out next year, X-Men: Apocalypse, Ryan Reynold's spinoff Deadpool, and the Gambit movie lead by Channing Tatum already starting production soon in their New Orleans filming location. One might ask what's next for the mutants? Well apparently 20th Century Fox is planning to make an X-Men TV series, and is currently in talks with Marvel to finally greenlight the production of the show. Now this rumor has been going on for a while in the internet, but now it seems like they're close in to having the series started. There hasn't been any deal signed with Marvel yet, but the company confirms that they are nearing a deal for a planned long-running series, and not just a one time television run.


            Television Group chairman and CEO Dana Walden recently talked with The Hollywood Reporter during the Television Critics Association press tour that they are hoping to make an announcement soon. Here's what she has to say about the deal:


[For] X-Men, we’re in negotiations with Marvel. We’re hopeful we’ll be able to announce something soon. We’re not closed on a deal yet but it’s something we’re definitely pursuing.

            It should be told that a live-action X-Men TV series is a very tricky thing for Fox to do considering that Marvel aren't particularly fond of sharing the rights to what they have on hand without an incentive, now that they're doing pretty good on their own. 20th Century Fox owns the movie rights for the X-Men characters, but Marvel/Disney has the rights for anything outside of the films. That is, Marvel needs to sign off on the deal for Fox to use their characters in the small screen.


            
        Another thing to note is that Disney's ABC has plenty of Marvel shows as it is, with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D and Agent Carter, and another one in development. There's also Marvel's Netflix shows featuring the Defenders series: Daredevil (who's already on filming location for its second season), Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist. TV series featuring Marvel characters seem to be working well enough without help from Fox. That being said, Walden remains optimistic with the deal:


The characters from the X-Men franchise are with Fox on the feature side so we won’t be including Marvel characters that are at ABC with Disney. This will be exclusively the franchise as it has existed at Fox.

            While the deal is still underway, Fox has already hired Star Trek 3's Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne to write the series, and sharing a "created by" credit with 24's Evan Katz and Manny Coto.


            It's obvious to think that Fox would want to connect the series with the feature films in some way, perhaps even featuring characters from the movie. But for now, we'll have to wait and see if Marvel agrees with the deal so production can start once and for all.

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