You know how you really, really love Marvel: Agents of Shield? Like, not guilt-watch or hate-watch love, but the sort of love born of true, genuine attachment and need? No? Well Fox probably think you do, because they're in talks with Marvel over a potential X-Men TV series. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Fox TV Chairman and CEO Dana Walden suggests a deal is close, and an official announcement is imminent. A writing staff has already been recruited and show-runners Evan Katz and Manny Coto (of 24 fame) are in place to oversee production. Sounds very imminent to me. The day of superhero reckoning is coming. Eventually a Batman & Robin will spoil the party, or cinemas and now TV will have too many ubermensch's on-show to support a viable ecosystem. Another X-Men product feels wildly inessential (we've got several movies in the pipeline, including Bryan Singer's Apocalypse next year) and leads me to suspect superhero saturation is almost upon us. Agents of Shield has managed to run for several seasons despite being a show nobody seems to like (although I'm reliably informed it's improved), but I don't think a second middling to poor genre addition has any real chance of success, even if the brand is as celebrated as the X-Men. If Fox plough forward (and they will), this thing had better be good. Especially as the quality of movie (think recent hits like Ant-Man) remains competitively solid. Obviously no release news yet, but if you're genuinely some sort of X-addict, you'll be happy to know the mutants have a cavalcade of big-screen outings planned including the aforementioned Apocalypse and Ryan Reynold's starring Deadpool. At least that one's got swearing in it.
