The Hollywood Reporter – 28.02.2018

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 38 FEBRUARY 28, 2018

FEIGE: TODD WILLIAMSON/GETTY IMAGE. REYNOLDS: GARY GERSHOFF/WIREIMAGE. HARDEN: EZRA SHAW/GETTY IMAGES. CURRY: AP PHOTO/LM OTERO

.

Illustration by Tomi Um

Behind the Headlines

The Report

T

wentieth Century Fox is developing

more new X-Men film properties than

ever. But will these projects still fit

at the studio after Disney’s $52.4 billion mega-

merger closes?

When Fox film execs hired Brian Michael

Bendis on Feb. 12 to pen an X-Men project

for Deadpool director Tim Miller, it signaled

to the town that the studio is moving full

steam ahead on its Marvel properties. Fox has

several other “secret” projects in development,

including a Silver Surfer stand-alone feature

that is being written by comics creator Brian

K. Vaughn. “We are going 100 miles per hour,”

says one executive involved.

But while the Disney-Fox deal, unveiled

Dec. 14, had many rejoicing that Fox’s Marvel

characters soon would be reunited and

integrated with their colleagues at Disney-

owned Marvel Studios, execs, filmmakers and

dealmakers now are thinking about what will

happen to certain characters given Disney’s

aversion to R-rated superhero movies that Fox

has championed, like Deadpool

($783 million worldwide gross)

and Logan ($616 m i l l ion).

Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige

has long harbored the ambition

of reuniting all the characters that

were licensed to various media

companies since Marvel was

threatened with bankruptcy in the

1990s. Will that include the foul-

mouthed X-Men?

On the Fox lot, phrases like “it’s business

as usual” reverberate in conversations with

agents and execs. “We actually have way more

in development and production in Marvel IP

than at any point in the history of the studio,”

says a Fox insider. “There’s been zero slow-

down on that front given Disney.”

Fox will release two X-Men movies this year:

Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool sequel on May 18

and X-Men: Dark Phoenix on Nov. 2. The studio

also is planning three X-Men movies for 2019,

with another three expected the following year.

Meanwhile, Channing Tatum’s long-i n-

development Gambit is still looking for a

director. A new draft of the script is expected

in March and it is greenlit, meaning that

the studio has budgeted it. And the horror-

themed New Mutants will undergo a round of

additional photography this summer that

will insert a new character into the thriller

that is dated for Feb. 22, 2019.

X-Force, a Deadpool spinoff from Drew

Goddard, is set to begin shooting in October,

with Reynolds and Josh Brolin expected to

star. The studio is still focusing on developing

both the X-Men and Fantastic Four brands,

including a Doctor Doom movie from Fargo

and Legion showrunner Noah Hawley.

As for Marvel’s plans, deals for many of its

key castmembers are expected to expire with

2019’s untitled Avengers 4 — a movie Feige

has indicated will shake up the status quo for

his universe, though it seems unlikely that

the already-in-production sequel will be used

to sow the seeds for integrating the X-Men in

there, even if the merger closes this year.

“They have to proceed as business as usual

in case the merger doesn’t go through,” says

one agent whose clients work on Fox’s Marvel

movies. “It’s a unique position to be in.”

NBA’s TV Ratings on a Roll:

Young, Engaged and Growing

G

auging something as ephemeral

as an abrupt shift in viewer

habits is, by nature, subjective — but

that’s not stopping sports insiders

from theorizing as to why the NBA’s

audience has jumped 15 percent

this season.

“The idea that there is a super-

team out there in the Golden State

Warriors, and a half-dozen franchises

trying to dethrone them, creates a

narrative that makes people want to

Execs say they’re ‘going 100 miles per hour’ on a slew of spinoff projects

with Silver Surfer and Doctor Doom, but privately, many fret over whether their

films will be affected by merger plans with a squeaky-clean company

BY BORYS KIT

Will Disney Disrupt Fox’s

X-Men Movie Mega-Plans?

LeBron vs. Steph helps power a four-year high for ‘an

intersection of sports and pop culture’ BY MICHAEL O’CONNELL

watch,” says Marc Ganis, president

of the marketing firm Sportscorp,

who is quick to note that the

league’s younger viewers help defy

live TV’s downward ratings trend.

(The NFL was off 10 percent over-

all this past season, and the Winter

Olympics ended Feb. 25 down

8 percent.)

The median age for NBA viewers

on TNT, ESPN, ABC and NBA TV

is 42, years younger than the NFL

(50) and MLB (57). These younger

fans are more likely to engage

in the digital space, where the NBA

has always outpaced other leagues.

(Houston Rockets guard James

Harden, for example, has 6.9 mil-

lion Instagram followers, where To m

Brady, the NFL’s marquee name,

has 3.8 million.) “The NBA really has

become an intersection of sports

and pop culture,” says Turner Sports

business senior vp Valerie Immele.

“That’s particularly evident when

you look at these younger demos.”

1

1.1

1.2

1.3

1.4M

2014-15 2015-16 2016-17 2017-18

Basketball Brings ’Em In

1.4M

1.19M

1.27M

1.19M

Reynolds

Feige

Source: Nielsen, average total viewers per game

With more

NBA teams

at a competitive

parity this year,

viewership among

adults 18-to-34

is up 20 percent.