As ABC continues its celebrated partnership with Marvel Television with the upcoming and hotly anticipated debut of Marvel's Inhumans this September, the channel is delighted to announce that for the past several months, ABC has been working closely in association with both Marvel Television and film production company Fox Studios, leading to the unprecedented development of MARVEL'S X-MEN ...a sweepingly ambitious live-action television project that will finally be bringing the beloved and widely popular X-Men comic book franchise to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The show is currently scheduled to debut on the ABC channel in November of 2018. Fan favourite and critical darling, executive producer Scott Buck (Iron Fist, Inhumans) will be serving as the project's principal showrunner.
"As X-Men fans ourselves, Marvel and ABC are delighted to finally get the opportunity to take these beloved, larger than life comic book characters and subsequently render them completely unrecognizable on the small screen" Scott Buck announced proudly at a secret press screening earlier today. "As someone who has arguably read a couple of comic books at some point in my life, I could not be more thrilled as a creator to interpret the colourful adventures of Professor Xavier and his merry band of pirates to a mainstream television audience...as they begin their daring exploits across the seven seas! That's what those books are about, right? Pirates? Wait...who are the X-Men again? Oh shit, they're those mutant guys, right?"
Although the producer remained frustratingly tight-lipped about any significant plot details relating to the show, Buck did let slip of a couple of important details. "In terms of the general plot, our show is going to open with all the mutants in the X-Men Universe instantly losing all of their mutant abilities, with the vast majority of the show revolving around the X-Men repeated attempts to get those powers back." Buck informed us. "Naturally, legendary mutant Wolverine will appear in the pilot episode, complimented with his iconic metallic claws...but of course he'll subsequently lose those claws in the first ten minutes of the episode and then we'll never see that character again."
When pressed for more details, Buck went on: "Obviously, as a show adapting a comic book from the 1960s detailing the exploits of a group of people with outrageous, visually breath-taking abilities, such as a teleporting blue demon and a woman possessed by the cosmic soul of an omnipotent space bird...our show is aiming for an incredibly grounded tone. Think The Wire or American History X. For example, instead of being a mutant leader who can shoot laser beams from his eyeballs, our version of Scott Summers is a much more relatable character, with said laser beams being entirely metaphorical in nature. As such, instead of lasers...our version of Scott will merely give people intense looks, undoubtedly rife with import and meaning...as emotionally rich and thematically dynamic as any run of the mill laser-beam. We think the fans are going to be really pleased with what we've done!"
"As a studio that is positively awash with a wide variety of creative talent, we are incredibly excited to bring Scott Buck in once again to take the reigns of this incredible corner of the Marvel Universe." Executive Vice President of Marvel Television, Jeph Loeb informed reporters later in the day, gently sobbing whilst slowly beginning the process of gouging out his own eyes. "As the showrunner responsible for last year's universally detested and critically reviled Iron Fist, in addition to his continuing work on Marvel's Inhumans, a show which has horrified comic book fans and television critics alike from around the world....we cannot wait to see how Scott will utterly make waste to all of the potential of yet another lucrative comic-book property. Marvel as a whole is utterly committed to refusing to invest these interesting characters with the appropriate creative talent and financial investment they so richly deserve, opting instead to gladly hand them over to Scott Buck to utterly squander them as D-List television fodder."
