While Disney seems to be moving away from its live-action Marvel TV series, its not slowing down at all on the animated front. Quite the opposite, according to Marvel Studios Head of Streaming, Television and Animation Brad Winderbaum.
Ahead of both the “X-Men ’97” second season finale this coming week and D23 next weekend, Winderbaum says the studio is stabilising how that highly acclaimed animated series is released in the future.
The first and second seasons of “X-Men ’97” had a large two-year gap between them, but that’s not going to be the case moving forward with Winderbaum confirming they’ve locked down an annual release approach.
He tells Collider that “Season 3 is going to come out next year (2027) and Season 4 (2028) the year after that. Even a year feels too long. I remember watching these every single day after school, and then they would be on as reruns. I guess you could rewatch these episodes on streaming, because you can watch anything now.”
He also talked about the show’s episode count saying the current 9-10 episode runs are likely to stay and won’t jump up to the 19 episode runs that “X-Men: The Animated Series” had in the 1990s:
“It’s a whole different business now, and streaming has its own limitations. Episode count is always a factor, and sometimes you have to decide, ‘Do you want a season to come out sooner or do you want more episodes?’ I tend to vote to get them out as soon as possible, even if you have to save some stories for subsequent seasons.”
The show’s future beyond the fourth season has yet to be decided, but the show has Winderbaum in its corner either way: “X-Men was a constant element of my life growing up, and I just want to make as many [seasons] as fast as possible for people to see.”
