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A key evolution of the modern age of superhero blockbusters is that more and more the story of a film has become the story of the film’s behind the scenes drama. Whether it’s the corporate mismanagement of the Amazing Spider-Man films, Josh Trank’s prima donna antics on Fant4stic, or the family tragedy & directorial scarpering of Justice League the behind the scenes stories are now the stories of those films.
The oldest and largest looming example of this is the Fox/Marvel feud, a war between companies that’s raged for well over a decade. The two absolutely loathe each other, to the point Marvel has canceled publishing Fantastic Four comics because Fox owns the movie rights and Fox, in turn, was willing to waste everyone’s time and money with Fant4stic. But where did all this animosity come from, what’s the origin of their feud? Well, it all goes back to a little show from 2001 called Mutant X- let’s dive in.
Our story begins back in the late ‘90s, 1996 specifically- the year it all came crashing down. See, the first half of the ‘90s was one of the most profitable periods for comic book sales there’s ever been. The notoriety of Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns had spurred adult comic readers out of the closets and into the streets eager to spend disposable income on comics. That combined with the trend of collectors buying issues they hoped would appreciate in value over time led to a major boom for the comic companies and the X-Men were at the forefront of this wave for Marvel.
In 1991 their relaunched X-Men #1 became the highest selling issue of all time and the 1992 X-Men animated series launched a whole universe of Marvel animated offerings at the time. By 1996, however, mismanagement at the corporate level and the speculator well running dry had seriously reversed Marvel’s fortunes and they had to declare bankruptcy. Pretty much in one single stroke, this entire era of comics came to an abrupt halt and the history of comics took a very abrupt turn.
Marvel was desperate for revenue and willing to do anything to get it so they decided to make something of a deal with the devil and sell the films rights to several popular characters. Previously Marvel had always maintained a tighter grip on intellectual property licensing when they were adapting characters through CBS but their financial status meant bowing to whatever whims were being dictated. So, with little choice, they licensed the film rights to the X-Men, Blade, and Fantastic Four to Fox, Spider-Man went to Sony, and the Hulk went to Universal.
Really though, Marvel got very lucky with when they were selling the rights as they made the deal just before the triple shot of Batman and Robin, Steel, and Spawn that halted a lot of popular interest in the superhero film genre, though that didn’t stop Blade from being a big hit in ’98. However, with Blade, a major success and X-Men breaking big in 2000 Marvel was on the road to recovery when 2001 rolled around, and this is where things get messy.
After the mass success of X-Men in 2000, Marvel was keen to capitalize on it now that financial stability was once more within their grasp. This came partly in the form of the Ultimate X-Men comic series, which acted as a quasi-extended universe of the show, but Marvel wanted more- they wanted TV. See, Marvel’s whole adaptive department at the time was being managed by mega-producer Avi Arad, the guy who got Marvel’s TV arm started in the ‘90s with all those animated series everyone loves. Arad was the major force behind A LOT of Marvel adaptations prior to the founding of Marvel studios with one pretty notable exception- X-Men: Evolution, the quasi-tie-in show produced after the success of the X-Men film.
Marvel being so thoroughly cut out of the TV market and the pending release of Smallville that same year pushed them to produce the series Mutant X completely without Fox’s involvement- which it turned out was a breach of contract. The thinking at the time was that Mutant X could be a way for Marvel to have its cake and eat it too, a show full of all new characters who technically weren’t mutants just the product of genetic engineering. Marvel actually has a pretty long history of playing legal hopscotch when it comes to the X-Men, once successfully arguing in court that X-Men action figures shouldn’t count as “toys representing humans” because the characters are mutants. However, in the case of Mutant X, that kind of flimflam wasn’t going to fly.
Fox sued Marvel and the production companies they partnered with at the time for breach of contract and the fact the show used “Mutant” so copiously and even called its characters “the New Mutants” made it a pretty clear-cut case. The whole thing became a massive legal quagmire that eventually ended in one of the production companies, Fireworks Entertainment, being dismantled by Fox. The whole thing pretty much killed Mutant X at the third season, forcing the show to end on an unresolved cliffhanger despite being fairly popular at the time, and something that might’ve been a competitor of Smallville ended up an obscure footnote in superhero TV history.
That disappointment has pretty much stuck in Marvel’s craw ever since 2003-2004 and was probably a big factor in the whole comics universe getting seriously rewritten in 2005. That’s when Marvel launched a concentrated campaign to segregate the X-Men from the main universe while also ingraining Wolverine into the Avengers. Then of course 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer became serious nails in the Fox, with Marvel quickly transitioning to producing their own films in 2008.
If you’re wondering why Fox still owns any superhero rights if Marvel doesn’t like them it’s that part of the contract was that so long as Fox produces superhero films it can maintain the rights because that’s the kind of stuff that goes into a contract when the other party has no leverage. As such, so long as Fox keeps making X-Men and Fantastic Four films there’s nothing Marvel can realistically do to get the film rights back.
Marvel did have one option in the realm of TV rights, which brings us neatly into the modern era. See, a big part of Fox torpedoing Mutant X is that they know how valuable the X-Men are as a TV property and have long wanted to make a live-action X-Men show after a failed attempt in 1996. The problem is that the same rules about Marvel not being able to make an X-Men show without Fox cut the other way: Fox can’t make an X-Men show without Marvel’s sign off. Now, obviously, Fox eventually got that sign off as they were able to make Legion and The Gifted, the series that kicked off this whole retrospective.
Nobody really knows what that means as far as the future of these two companies goes though there’s been a lot of chatter about the icy relations between Fox and Marvel finally starting to thaw. Fox still holds a tight grip on the X-Men and Fantastic Four film rights, with a Dr. Doom movie in the works alongside the New Mutants, Gambit, Deadpool, and X-Men films. There’s been a rumor that Fox wants a shared custody deal like Sony managed to swing but that’s probably only the case for the Fantastic Four. Personally, I think Marvel decided to let Fox make X-Men shows because their own TV offerings weren’t doing that great and some revenue is better than no revenue.
As for Mutant X, the little show that started this all, it’s honestly kind of tragic what a mediocre series it actually was. It’s basically just another stripped down minimalist exercise in non-superhero genre fiction like a lot of superhero material in the 2000s as inspired by the X-Men movies themselves. It doesn’t compare with the scope Smallville eventually attained or the unique view of Birds of Prey or even the weirdness of Heroes. But I guess that’s history- a massive legal battle and copyright feud that still shapes entertainment to this day kicked off by control over a pretty lame show that was always going to seem dated and mediocre.
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