‘X-Men ’97’ EP Brad Winderbaum on Kevin Feige’s Mandate and How ‘Daredevil: Born Again’ Updated MCU Canon

On the heels of What If…? season one’s warm reception, Marvel Studios head of streaming Brad Winderbaum knew that now was the time to pursue his longtime dream of reviving the beloved Fox Kids show X-Men: The Animated Series. The series aired from 1992 to 1997, and Winderbaum, as executive producer, is on the verge of releasing X-Men ’97, which picks up right where the original series left off as the classic X-Men characters are forced to find a way forward without the leadership of Professor Charles Xavier.

Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige required only two conditions before giving his blessing on the latest Disney+ animated series.

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“Following the success of What If…?, when we were able to make more animated shows, [X-Men ’97] was my first idea out of the box. And Kevin [Feige] was like, ‘Alright, if we can get the [original] cast and we can get the song, let’s do it.’ And fortunately, we were able to do that,” Winderbaum tells The Hollywood Reporter.

In 2018, when Disney CEO Bob Iger pivoted to streaming with the development of the Disney+ streaming platform for a late 2019 launch, a production mandate was established among his top studios. And so Marvel Studios proceeded to accelerate development on at least eight shows in 2018 and 2019: WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, What If…?, Hawkeye, Moon Knight, Ms. Marvel and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.

When these series eventually started airing in January 2021, the pandemic streaming boom was already in full effect, and rabid viewer interest in between Marvel Studios’ first and second streaming series, WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, coincided with Disney’s five-year stock high. That performance remained relatively steady throughout the rest of 2021, as Hawkeye’s holiday release served as the studio’s fifth series that year.

However, in the spring of 2022, the bubble burst, as Wall Street fell out of love with streaming. As a result, every streamer, including Disney+, has had to reevaluate.

“Certainly the world has shifted. The original idea was that we can create whatever we wanted to launch Disney+ and to have a home for new Marvel ideas to take place. And now we do have to be a little bit more judicious with our choices,” Winderbaum says.

2023 brought some more bumps in the road, beginning with the creative misstep of Secret Invasion that prompted the studio to retool how they produce television. They also hit the reset button on their most anticipated upcoming show, Daredevil: Born Again, as early footage failed to impress Marvel brass during reviews mid-writers strike. Looking ahead, Winderbaum is optimistic about all of their adjustments, while Born Again even took cues from Marvel Studios’ biggest streaming win to date: Loki.

“Frankly, a lot of that [Daredevil: Born Again reinvention] was influenced as much from Loki as it was from our X-Men ’97 experience. It’s about honoring what came before in order to find a new arc for these iconic characters,” Winderbaum shares. “So I am really excited about what’s on the horizon. There’s some great, great work coming down the pipe that audiences are going to really love.”

Daredevil: Born Again’s creative overhaul also prompted Marvel Studios to finally embrace Netflix’s former Marvel shows as MCU canon once and for all. These Marvel Television-produced series, including Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist and The Defenders, were always technically in the MCU, but Marvel Studios kept them at arm’s length due to their overwhelming task at the time of trying to culminate their first decade of films with Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame.

So it wasn’t until recently that Marvel Studios made these canon additions official by including the tiles for each former Netflix show in their MCU timeline on Disney+.

“We finally said it out loud,” Winderbaum says. “Flash forward now to Disney+, where we are actually laying out the timeline with tiles on a screen, all of a sudden we’re like, ‘We should just do it. Let’s do it.’ It was also spurred by the redevelopment of Daredevil: Born Again, once we started to really lean into some of the mythology and backstory that was established in those Netflix shows.”

X-Men ’97 arrives March 20 amid unusual circumstances. Just weeks before the debut, Marvel fired creator Beau DeMayo in early March. No reason was given, and Winderbaum has not commented aside from praising DeMayo’s work on the show and stating he was looking forward to audiences seeing the work, which is already deep into season two.

During a recent conversation with THR, Winderbaum also discusses bringing X-Men: The Animated Series’ original brain trust into the fold as consultants on X-Men ’97.

Marvel Studios has flirted with mutants on a number of occasions since acquiring them in the Fox deal, whether that was Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) having a genetic “mutation” or cameos from Patrick Stewart’s Charles Xavier and Kelsey Grammer’s Hank McCoy. So what made X-Men ’97 on Disney+ the right venue to properly kick things off with these characters?

It really came from a place of passion and love, to be honest with you. I would rank [X-Men: The Animated Series] near the top of the most influential stories to me, personally, and to so many creative minds that have come through these doors. It comes up in conversation constantly, and I don’t think it could be understated how quietly influential that original series has been to filmmakers of a certain kind at a certain time. So, following the success of What If…?, when we were able to make more animated shows, it was my first idea out of the box. And Kevin [Feige] was like, “Alright, if we can get the cast and we can get the song, let’s do it.” And fortunately, we were able to do that.

You likely had an initial aim for the revival series, but how did it evolve as you started to receive various pitches from writers?

The creative challenge of this show is in not just reviving, but emulating and honoring a show that was made 30 years ago. So, using all of our creative strength through this amazing array of artists and animators — and even the voice talent and the music and everyone that has touched the show — our guiding principle is trying to emulate our memory of it. So that’s one of the reasons why we brought in [X-Men: The Animated Series showrunners] Eric and Julia Lewald and [X-Men: The Animated Series producer/director] Larry Houston. We worked so closely with them throughout the process so that they could, in a way, train us on how they made the original show and what their limitations were.

They made their show much faster on a budget. They had to hit that Fox Kids timetable, and they were still telling these amazing character-driven stories. So we had to create artificial parameters for ourselves. It’s kind of like a code of ethics that we could follow so that we had rules that we wouldn’t break. In a modern world where we have endless possibilities, it’s so tempting to break rules at the wrong time and to innovate in the wrong ways that take us away from the center. And so we were constantly having to keep ourselves honest from a design perspective and a storytelling perspective to bring us back to that original feeling.

So we’re trying to rebuild what we remember, but it’s like the observer influencing the experiment. You can only get so close, and it’s going to evolve. There’s also times where we break our own rules. So it was important to [supervising director] Jake Castorena that we stayed in the flat plane and had locked-off BGs and moved the characters like they did in the OG show, until we didn’t. If there was a moment of action, a moment of drama, a moment of emotion where we can use the Z-axis, then we can use the dynamism that comes with these tools to enhance the emotion of the moment. And he does that to great effect throughout the series.

Picking up from where the original series left off, it’s really interesting to see the dynamic without Xavier’s leadership. It really tests the mettle of these other characters. Was the lack of Xavier ever an issue or barrier for some people in the greenlighting of this show?

One advantage that we have at Marvel is the legacy of the comics. We could go in and look at the stories where Xavier was off the field and see how those characters reacted. And Xavier’s message is so strong that even when he’s not onscreen, he’s very present. Scott [Summers/Cyclops], for example, is trying to uphold Xavier’s ideal in his own way, and even Magneto struggles with it as well. This idea of peaceful coexistence in a world that fears you is on everybody’s mind, as these mutants are the ones who are feared. So even though he’s not there onscreen, Xavier definitely looms large in the story.

I realize this show exists in its own bubble, but the mutants will eventually have a prominent place in the live-action MCU. So was there anything that was off-limits?

No, actually. One of the things that was quite liberating about the show was how much we’re able to do, because we’re in the ’90s sandbox. If we were kicking off an X-Men cartoon that took place in 2024 and were redesigning the characters in a modern way, then there might actually be more guardrails. But because we’re in the ’90s and because we’re emulating a certain time and place in the comics — that Chris Claremont, John Byrne, Jim Lee era — we’re narratively able to almost do whatever we want and go wherever we want to go in the Marvel universe.

Streaming is in a weird place across the industry, as everyone seems to be tightening their belts and focusing on quality, not quantity. As the head of streaming for Marvel Studios, are you also picking your spots more carefully now? 

Yes, certainly the world has shifted. The original idea was that we can create whatever we wanted to launch Disney+ and to have a home for new Marvel ideas to take place. And now we do have to be a little bit more judicious with our choices. But one thing that’s liberating about television is, because it’s a longer form and it takes place over more time and is not just two hours, we are able to look at the Marvel characters and see how they can blossom in unexpected ways. So we can still be a little bit more experimental and take some risks, but like anything else, you learn as you go. We’ve always known this, but one thing I’ve learned that’s really true is that the characters are still at the core of everything we do. Creating entertaining, fun-to-watch characters that can teach empathy and hold a mirror up to the audience and become an emotional conduit for people, that’s still our guiding principle.

The reason I asked that question is because Loki, as far as I’m concerned, fulfilled the original promise of Marvel Studios and Disney+. It was phenomenal storytelling, and it deepened MCU characters in a way that the movies don’t always have time for. So has that win registered at the top? Is the success of Loki not lost on anyone?

Loki is one of our most fulfilled characters, and that second season is certainly one of the things I’m most proud of. So that’s always the goal: to have a dynamic character that changes in that way and resonates emotionally with the audience. So [Loki’s success] is not lost on us, and it has influenced our storytelling like any success has. Moving forward, our next show out is Agatha, and there are parallels there with two antiheroes. It’s a different show, but it strives to plumb the same emotional depths. And I’d certainly say that’s true with Daredevil: Born Again as well, which went through a bit of a reinvention after the strike. Frankly, a lot of that was influenced as much from Loki as it was from our X-Men ’97 experience. It’s about honoring what came before in order to find a new arc for these iconic characters. So I am really excited about what’s on the horizon. There’s some great, great work coming down the pipe that audiences are going to really love.

Marvel Studios recently proclaimed the former Netflix shows to be MCU canon. They’re even reflected as such on Disney+. Now, I’ve seen some people try to say that Marvel changed their mind on this subject, but the way I see it is that you finally made up your mind. Would you also say that you kept your options open as long as possible? 

We finally said it out loud. When the Netflix shows were coming out and being made, we were building towards Infinity War and Endgame. We were trying to balance all of these film franchises and get them to culminate onscreen in these two epic movies. To say it was a challenge is not even correct. It was one of the most challenging creative endeavors the studio ever undertook. I’m not sure there will ever be anything like it again in cinema. It took so much to get all that stuff to galvanize in that one place and in that one time so that people could have that experience in the movie theater.

So, at the time, to say, “Alright, we’re also going to take this television show and wrap our heads around that,” it would’ve been too much, even though we were communicating back and forth. Everyone on the television side and the film side knew what each other was doing, and you can see that there’s a continuity there. The references do line up, but it was just too much for us to wrap our minds around at the time.

Flash forward now to Disney+, where we are actually laying out the timeline with tiles on a screen, all of a sudden we’re like, “We should just do it. Let’s do it.” It was also spurred by the redevelopment of Daredevil: Born Again, once we started to really lean into some of the mythology and backstory that was established in those Netflix shows. I was asked about this during the press for Echo, and I realized, “Oh, it’s not just assumed. People have an active interest and they want confirmation.” So we were able to do it fairly quickly, and it’s interesting that the service of Disney+ actually became the statement just by rearranging those tiles. That’s our medium to define the canon now, which is wild to think about.

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X-Men ’97 premieres March 20 on Disney+.

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