News Corp.’s 20th Century Fox Film Corp. and Marvel Enterprises Inc. have filed competing lawsuits over the use of the superheroes The X-Men.
Marvel created The X-Men in 1963, when the comic book series of the same name was initially published. The X-Men are humans whose mutated genes give them super powers.
20th Century Fox is seeking damages from Marvel, which is planning to start filming a live-action TV series called Mutant X on June 4. 20th Century Fox claims that the series will cheapen the value of Fox’s The X-Men movie and ignores contracts that Marvel signed with Fox.
“Although we value our good relationship with Marvel and hope for a quick resolution of this matter, we must take all appropriate action to protect our valuable X-Men rights,” Flo Grace, vice president of communications for Fox, said Thursday.
Grace refused to comment further on the legal action being taken by 20th Century Fox or the Marvel counter-suit.
Marvel alleges that the television series differs entirely from the movie, and that the series has different character names, different character personalities and a different underlying premise. Marvel’s chief creative officer asserted in a press release by the company that modern science makes it logical to have genetically-altered superheroes.
A Marvel spokesperson did not return calls for comment.
Marvel’s complaint was filed just minutes after the Fox complaint, according to The Associated Press. In its lawsuit, Marvel asked for a declaratory judgment from the court, contending that it can’t possibly infringe on its own trademarks, and thus hasn’t done anything wrong.
Marvel’s production company has recently finalized the filming schedule, with many resources committed to the project. The filming is scheduled to begin June 4, and the series debut is tentatively set for the fall. It will pose a definite financial hardship to Marvel to cancel production at this juncture.
This isn’t the first time a legal battle has occurred over the rights to a superhero.
A decade-long battle over the feature film rights to the Marvel Comics character Spiderman is one of Hollywood’s costliest and most convoluted legal spectacle. At one point there were five lawsuits pending before Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Valerie Baker, with as many as 18 separate written agreements at issue.
Howard Weg, an attorney who represented the liquidating trust of Carolco Pictures at the time – which claimed to have acquired the movie rights in 1989 but went bankrupt in 1995 – told reporters: “All the entities involved have elected not to make a movie, but litigation.”
The matter was ultimately settled after 11 years of litigation, with Columbia Pictures finally capturing the rights to make a Spiderman movie. James Cameron has written a treatment. David Koepp is the credited screenwriter. The movie is scheduled a summer 2002 release, 13 years after the movie rights were acquired.
