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Disney+’s highly anticipated animated series X-Men ’97 hasn’t even premiered on the streaming network yet, but already there’s been a major shakeup with its production team.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the series creator, writer and producer, Beau DeMayo, was unexpectedly fired from the show just weeks before it was set to premiere on Disney+ and left everyone scratching their heads at the sudden move from Marvel. The decision comes just weeks after DeMayo had finished writing the second season of X-Men ’97 and was already pondering ideas for a third season with his writing team.
As of now, Marvel hasn’t given any reason for the sudden firing of DeMayo who’s also written for the live-action series Moon Knight and was also working on Blade, but best believe we’ll be all ears once they do because this really took the comic book world by surprise.
Per The Hollywood Reporter:
It was [sic] surprising turn of events on the eve of the show’s March 20 debut. Splitting with writers is a normal part of business for Marvel or any studio. However, it is unusual for a top creative on a Marvel project to miss a premiere or cancel press plans last minute, even if they’ve been shuffled to the side. Most Marvel premieres feature multiple screenwriters walking the red carpet, some of whom had been rewritten by other writers also walking the carpet.
Marvel announced DeMayo’s hiring in November 2021. The move was met with some level of excitement, as the scribe brought his identity as a gay Black man to the project, and made it a point in talking to the press about how growing up as the adopted son to white parents with a Korean sister in the South made the X-Men characters — and their struggles for acceptance by society — feel personal to him.
His silence on social media has been acute as he was a prolific poster, sharing X-Men tidbits as well as shirtless pictures of himself at the gym. For a time he also ran a non-explicit Only Fans account, all of which inspired the LGBTQ publication Out to declare him “the Sexy, Gay Marvel Writer & Showrunner to Know.”
Neither Marvel nor DeMayo have responded for comments about the firing but in show business it’s only a matter of time before things leak and rumors swirl around such events. We just hope it was creative differences or something along those lines and nothing more displeasing.
Lord knows it wasn’t easy for DeMayo to have taken on the task of reviving the beloved X-Men animated series as he was attacked online by users who accused him of Whitewashing the character of Sunspot by casting Brazilian actor Gui Agustini to voice the character in the series. It’s a damn VoiceOver role, man, but still it led to DeMayo deactivating his Twitter account for his own mental health.
And now this. SMH.
What do y’all think of Beau DeMayo’s departure from Marvel? Let us know in the comments section below.
Marvel Fires ‘X-Men ’97’ Creator Weeks Before The Show Premiere was originally published on hiphopwired.com
