Marvel and X-Men '97 creator Beau DeMayo's big secret fight is finally breaking out in public

Months after the show came out, the drama behind creator and showrunner Beau DeMayo’s firing from Disney+’s shockingly good revival series X-Men ’97 is finally starting to leak out. Previously, DeMayo had talked a bit about his inspirations for some of the show’s heavier episodes, but neither he nor Marvel/Disney have ever addressed why they “parted ways” ahead of the release of the show’s first season. Well, now they’re talking: DeMayo called out Disney earlier tonight on social media, saying the studio stripped him of credits on the show’s second season (which he’d completed work on before the split) because he posted Pride fan-art of himself as Cyclops; Disney fired back by stating that, actually, they did fire him, now that they think about it, after running an internal investigation that apparently found undescribed but “egregious” problems with DeMayo’s behavior. So, yeah, we’re past the “playing nice” part of the story, for sure.

Firstly: DeMayo posted on Twitter and Instagram tonight, writing “I’m so grateful to have worked on #XMen97, collaborating with some amazingly talented folks. Creating this revival was a dream come true and the support fans have shown is so touching. However, I felt it pressing for me to speak up in the wake of leaving the show… Above is #XMen fan-art I posted on Instagram for Gay Pride in June. On June 13, #Marvel sent a letter notifying me that they’d stripped my Season 2 credits due to the post. Sadly, this is the latest in a troubling pattern I suffered through while on working on #XMen97 and #Blade.” (DeMayo was one of several screenwriters who’ve taken a crack at the long-announced, as-yet-unfilmed Mahershala Ali Blade movie.) The art in question, by an artist who goes by @nartz.print on Instagram, depicts an underwear-clad DeMayo as X-Men character Cyclops. (DeMayo’s social media often includes pictures of himself shirtless and in workout gear, as well as other pieces of fan-art depicting him as other X-Men.) DeMayo concludes his posts by writing that “I’ll have more to say soon,” but that he “must take a step back from social media to find a safer space for me to be out, proud, and nerdy. Stay tuned.”

Disney did not appreciate this, to put it mildly. Anyone who’s watched the company for long enough—remember that time Marvel and Scarlett Johansson got in a big fight, and they went from “We love Scarlett!” to “Money-grubbing performers are trying to take your movies away” in like a single morning?—will be familiar with the way the company’s PR strategy can shift from big smiles to thermonuclear once they sense they’re under an attack. The company was very quick to issue a scorched earth statement to THR within a couple of hours of DeMayo’s post, and while the situation hasn’t escalated to leaked accusations—yet—the company made it pretty clear it thinks it could go the “showing receipts” route if it wanted to: “Given the egregious nature of the findings,” a spokesperson said, “We severed ties with [DeMayo] immediately and he has no further affiliation with Marvel.” The situation here has always felt a little unstable—with the long lead times of animation meaning DeMayo and Marvel were still functionally in business together (and garnering serious critical and fan acclaim) even after…whatever went down…went down—but it’s still shocking to see the masks on the whole affair fall this fast, this hard.

Update, 8/16/24, 12:53 a.m.: And now, DeMayo is firing back himself, accusing Disney of picking a fight with him to try to distract from problems with its subscription service. “The truth will be revealed,” he wrote on Twitter. “After their Disney Plus disaster, Marvel wants to mislead with alleged contract breaches over tweets. It’s tragic it’s come to this but unsurprising. Stay tuned.” DeMayo (who also says he’ll have “legal letters” and “other items” to back up his version of events available at some point) made the above statement in a response to a Variety article that quotes “A source with knowledge of the investigation” who’s claiming it was in regards to “sexual misconduct, and that DeMayo repeatedly violated his termination agreement,” so, yes, this has all gone from 0 to extraordinarily messy in about 3 hours on an otherwise quiet Thursday night.