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Thursday 29 January 2015

X-Men For TV? Fox Gives Disney The Finger ....which has a totally different meaning in the UK than in the US!

This item, posted over at Pastemagazine: http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2015/01/fox-wants-a-live-action-x-men-television-series.html  seems to indicate that Disney (Marvel) are not going to get their characters back any time soon. 

After all, Fox has seen how many bucks 'Marvel' super heroes pull in.  Disney would need to buy the US Treasury to buy the franchise back right now.

Anyway, over to the marvelously named Turner Minton.....

Fox Wants a Live-Action X-Men Television Series


Fox Wants a Live-Action <i>X-Men</i> Television Series

Not every superhero saga has to be a multi-million dollar production set for the silver screen.


Today, multiple comic book adaptations are heading for the living room. The CW network has a nice crossover set-up going between Arrow and The Flash, a leap and bounds better than their early experimental days with Smallville. Netflix has recently ordered the first season of Daredevil, which is set to premiere its first episode April 10. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Agent Carter seem to be doing well for themselves on ABC. Now, Fox is looking to get in on the action with a live-action version of X-Men, according to an exclusive from Collider.


Hold your horses moviegoers. Before anyone gets carried away, the series is in early development and should not interfere with any plans to complete the popular film franchise. With cast negotiations settling down for the latest entry in the film series, X-Men: Apocalypse, the studio is securely placing its bets on viewers wanting more mutants. Although the films have proven box office successes and guaranteed high paychecks for everyone involved, Fox has to believe that the series can’t go on forever. After all, Hugh Jackman has played Wolverine an unprecedented seven times. Although it’s unimaginable to see anyone else in the role of the metallic clawed mutant, audiences can’t expect him to stay young forever, unlike the character he plays.


The new series was first rumored in April of last year when writer/producer Simon Kinberg, who is currently working on the script for X-Men: Apocalypse, talked about the possibility of a X-Men television series coming to the Fox network with Collider editor Steve Weintraub:


“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 esteemed studio will have a few hurdles to jump over if it is going to get the show jumpstarted. The current deal between the studio and Marvel doesn’t include the rights to make a television adaptation of the Stan Lee comic series. Fox Entertainment Chairman Gary Newman had the following to add concerning the negotiations with Marvel:


“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.”


Audiences have to be as cautiously optimistic about the promise of such a live-action series. On the one hand, the lower production value could diminish the value of the comic books with the lack of attentive action sequences. On the other hand, there should be an increased story arc leaning toward character development. Finally, the long-awaited love triangle between Jean Grey, Cyclops and Logan will get all the attention it needs.


The only question left to ask is how the series will be handled. Right now, the film series is trending towards a focus on the younger lives of the heroes, a step in the opposite direction of how the series got its start. With such a large cast to fill, the stars will most likely be unknown or lesser known celebrities. Ideally, no matter how the series approaches the content, the work will remain faithful to its source material.

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