Everything about comic books in pop culture is getting bigger. Marvel has already established its Marvel Cinematic Universe and has plans to greatly expand it, and DC Comics is ramping up for its own shared cinematic world. DC is doing well by television too, with high-profile premieres like The Flash and Gotham doing extremely well, along with Constantine and iZombie on deck. Marvel's presence on television is also gearing up, though without the same level of success as its competition. However, that may very well change if 20th Century Fox has anything to do with it.
Rumors have been forming around the network producing a X-Men TV show based off of the X-Factor comic books from Marvel.
The report comes from Bleeding Cool, which claims that a Hollywood insider has found out about Fox's upcoming plans for an expanded X-Men universe, and those plans include an X-Factor TV show. These rumors were supported by eatgeekplay.com's Shawn Madden, who tweeted about the project late last night.
Okay, since the cats out of the bag...Fox is developing a TV show based on Peter David's X-Factor.
— Shawn Madden (@joydivisionary) October 6, 2014
The X-Factor series will definitely feature Jamie Madrox and be sort of like "Fringe in the X-Men world". — Shawn Madden (@joydivisionary) October 6, 2014
According to Madden, the show will adapt Peter David's award-winning run on X-Factor, and will focus on Jamie Madrox, a.k.a. the Multiple Man.
The rumors match up with a statement from X-Men: Days of Future Past producer Simon Kinberg, who spoke about Fox's overall plans earlier this year:
"We're still in this place of figuring out what the future of the franchise will be, but when you look at S.H.I.E.L.D. to some extent and what Marvel is doing now with Daredevil and other shows on Netflix, it makes sense to tell some of these stories in TV partly because there's just not enough screens to do all these characters, and also because the serialized format of comic books is better suited for TV."
All things considered, it makes sense that Fox would look into expanding its X-Men universe into television, simply because they've already been working on expanding their Marvel film titles. X-Men: Apocalypse is currently in production alongside The Fantastic Four, and Fox also announced the long-awaited Deadpool movie a few months back. Those projects, plus the ones from Marvel Studios and the films from DC Comics could very well exhaust movie-goers over the next few years, and making sure that people still have something to watch from home could end up making a big difference.
Still, it's wise to take this news with a rather large grain of salt: everything is still a rumor, and despite the evidence, nothing is official until Fox makes an announcement. If the network does have something to announce, there's a very good chance that it will do so at the upcoming New York Comic Con this weekend.
