By Julian
Recently, the creator and showrunner of next week’s premiere of X-Men 97, Beau DeMayo was suddenly fired by Marvel last week. Complete with deactivating his company e-mail and informing the cast and crew he’s no longer the lead showrunner for this series; despite It’s irregular for Marvel to fire the people who worked hard on their projects before premiere week. More strange is that DeMayo’s Instagram account was deactivated causing more confusion among the fanbase. Marvel Studios has yet to release a public statement on the matter, and DeMayo’s representatives did not return calls and no e-mail response from the showrunner himself.
Image via The Movie Database/Marvel Studios/Disney
DeMayo; a gay Black man, was a regular at Marvel who worked on Moon Knight as a writer and director duties and drafting scripts for the untitled Blade movie. He continued to write new episodes for X-Men 97 season two and formed loose ideas for season three. DeMayo talked about the importance of his hiring stating, “how growing up as the adopted son to white parents with a Korean sister in the South made the X-Men characters—and their struggles for acceptance in society—feel personal to him”. He further emphasized his love for the 1992 X-Men: The Animated Series quote “Anyone who feels different, we all have a Magento inside of us, and we all have a Charles Xavier. We all have a part of us that wants to burn it all down, and there’s a part of us who wants to find a compromise and build it up. And those comics really helped me understand my identity”. On social media, he often posts X-Men facts and pictures of himself shirtless at the gym. He also had a non-explicit Only Fans account as the LGBTQ magazine publication Out called him “the Sexy, Gay Marvel Writer & Showrunner to Know”.
Image via The Movie Database/Marvel Animation/Disney
In May 2023, he was attacked by users calling him out for whitewashing the character Sunspot for casting Brazilian actor Gui Agustini. It prompted him to delete his Twitter profile after this incident. These series of events of being relieved of his job at Marvel and deactivating his social media outlets look to shape what appears to be another Marvel controversy during an awkward premiere week for Marvel Animation’s X-Men 97 streaming on Disney+ on March 20th.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
