Last month, it was announced that Fox had decided to pass on the proposed X-Men TV series Hellfire, which would have revolved around the mutant superheroes’ foes The Hellfire Club, and speaking to Slash Film during the Television Critics Association summer press tour, network chief Dana Walden has explained why they opted against moving forward with the project.
““We did see an early draft of Hellfire and there was a lot of work to be done,” said Walden. “Manny Coto and Evan Katz were getting very busy with the new 24. At a certain point we all regrouped, together with Simon Kinberg and Bryan Singer and Lauren Shuler Donner and Jeph Loeb at Marvel and really made a decision. I would say if there was anything about Hellfire that was not ideal for us, it felt like a show that wanted to live as a feature rather than really taking advantage of what television does best: exploring relationships and characters and smaller moments. It doesn’t mean it can’t feel like a big show but Hellfire felt more like another installment of the features.”
Fox is still dipping its toes into the X-Men world with another as-yet-untitled series from writer Matt Nix (Burn Notice), with Walden teasing that: “There will be some iconic characters but mostly this is about a new family. It’s about an average family who encounters this extraordinary world and children who have mutant powers and they end up on the run, so it’s a little bit underground railroad in terms of a storytelling spine. It’s a traditional pilot schedule so we anticipate it would be available for next fall or midseason.”
Marvel and Fox do have one other X-Men series in the pipeline, with the Dan Stevens-headlined Legion set to premiere in early 2017. Watch the trailer here.
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