Larry Houston, the producer and director of the iconic X-Men: The Animated Series, confirms that he has held talks with Disney to revive the show. The animated series ran for five seasons from 1992 to 1997 and made the mutant heroes popular with fans who had never picked up a comic book before. It was one of the first crossover hits for Marvel, well before Bryan Singer's X-Men movies made the characters household names.
The show covered many of the classic X-Men storylines, including Days of Future Past, the Phoenix Saga and Dark Pheonix. It also introduced audiences to a number of classic X-Men villains, including Apocalypse, Magneto and Mr. Sinister, and arguably did a better job at adapting the comic for the screen than many of the recent movies in the X-Men franchise. X-Men: The Animated Series is now streaming on Disney+ and has predictably seen a resurgence in popularity, with older fans rediscovering the show and introducing it to their kids. As a result in June, the creators of the show announced their intention to pitch a revival of the show to Disney.
Now, Houston has confirmed that those talks have started. Speaking on the X-Men: The Animated Series reunion panel as part of the Wizard World Virtual Experiences 2020 event, Houston said that a "conversation" has been had, but nothing has materialized yet. The legendary animation director, who worked on a number of classic series in the 1990s added that he's retired these days, but could be persuaded to come out of retirement to work on a limited revival of X-Men: The Animated Series, provided the original creative team was used. You can see his full comments below.
"We've had talks, but that's about it. We've made conversation and it's up to them to make the decision, but we've let them know that we're all available for whatever they want to do in the future. Whatever they wanted to do if we had all the original team ... if we could do a special, a one-off episode, or a five-part episode. That's what I would come out of retirement for."
While Houston is understandably reticent to say whether the revival will indeed happen, the fact that talks have taken place is incredibly promising. Disney has shown its willingness to dig into the archives for Disney+, reviving The Muppets for the platform, and producing a number of original shows related to their more popular movies in order to have content available on the service.
Hopefully, the talks progress and fans are treated to a revival. As Houston says, the most attractive proposition would be a limited series consisting of no more than 10 episodes, perhaps adapting a classic X-Men story line that wasn't adapted in the original series. There's also space to introduce some of the newer X-Men characters that have been created in the intervening years, with a view to creating a spin-off of X-Men: The Animated Series. The possibilities are fairly endless, and Disney would be silly to let the opportunity to revive the iconic series slip through its fingers.