If grizzled war veteran and multiple murderer becomes principal of a private school sounds like the sort of high-concept plot you'd see in a new NBC sitcom premiering this fall (and being cancelled this winter) then, well, you're speaking Fox's language. Sort of. The other big news about the X-Men cinematic universe this week, besides the addition of Deadpool to the roster, is that the studio are considering a television series of some description and all. It looks like TV is the new battleground for the warring comic book adaptations, with Marvel's Agents Of SHIELD soon to be spinning off into Agent Carter and a handful of Netflix shows, just in time to fight in the schedules against DC's Arrow, Gotham, Flash, and rumoured Supergirl, Teen Titans and Legion Of Super-Heroes shows forthcoming. It'd make sense that Fox would throw their hat into the ring and all with an X-Men series, right? Of course, X-Men already had their way with the airwaves for a good part of the century so far. In the nineties they were part of the renaissance of surprisingly decent superhero cartoons, something they followed up with in the noughties with X-Men Evolution. Then Wolverine And The X-Men managed a couple of seasons before getting cancelled, another significant step forward. From the sounds of it though they're developing a live-action series, of which there are two main obstacles: the necessary budget to render a bunch of fun mutant powers on a weekly basis (something SHIELD's struggled with), and washing out the taste of the last live-action X-Men show they tried (1996's made-for-TV movie Generation X, with a whole lot of whitewashing of the cast). Still, the prospect of Wolverine and co - or at least some related characters - busying the schedules is a tantalising one, for studio and fans alike.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
