X-Men: The Animated Series Showrunner Eric Lewald Says New X-Men ’97 Series Will Have A Focus On “Adult Themes”

John F. Trent |

Nov 18, 2021

X-Men: The Animated Series showrunner Eric Lewald recently provided an update on what Disney’s plans are for their upcoming Disney+ series X-Men ’97.

Disney announced that X-Men: The Animated Series would get a sequel series in X-Men ’97 on Disney+ as part of their Disney+ Day presentation.

In a press release they revealed X-Men ’97 is a “an animated series from Marvel Studios that explores new stories in the iconic ‘90s timeline of the original series.”

They also announced that Beau DeMayo would be the executive producer and head writer.

Appearing on the Power of X-Men Podcast, Lewald alongside his wife and fellow writer on X-Men: The Animated Series, Julia, provided some details on what Marvel Studios and Disney+ have in store for X-Men ’97.

Lewald said, “We really pushed as hard as we could against the restrictions of being a kid’s show on Saturday morning, but those were real restrictions and these folks won’t have those restrictions.”

He continued, “I think they are focusing this more, the audience they are thinking about are, the core audience maybe teens on Disney+ and adults. And so it was a weird new push for us to have adult themes in the show. They’re starting out with adult themes, so they’re starting out with thinking of this is a bunch of adults thrown together struggling with something and we’re going to show the melodrama and we’re going to show you some of the personal things that adults go through.”

Lewald elaborated, “Where we kept on, at least at the beginning, getting weird questions from various people involved saying, ‘Well, are kids gonna watch this?’ And now we prove that they could, this new show is going to start out without – we can’t tell you any specifics – but it’s going to be, they’re going to be able to tell adult stories without looking over the shoulder and wondering if this is going to be kid-friendly for Fox Kids.”

Later in the video, Julia detailed that the original plan to wrap up the series. She said, “Originally, the game plan was to wrap the series up with the four-part Beyond Good and Evil.”

“To have been able to wrap up the show with those four stories I think would have been very satisfying, if I can say that. A real coda to the show back then.”

Eric Lewald then said, “We are excited. The couple of voice over artists that have spoken to us about scripts they’ve seen are very excited. They say it feels like 1992.”