X-Men ’97 creator Beau DeMayo has been at the center of controversy ever since Marvel kicked him out of his show, and then decided that they would be removing his writing credits for the second season.
With Marvel and DeMayo having a ‘he-said-she-said’ battle online of what really went down with DeMayo’s exit, Deadline has come out with the details from DeMayo’s side, citing that Marvel had criminal working conditions and had been launching a smear campaign on DeMayo to make it look like the studio was justified in removing him from his show.
In a nearly 30-minute video that DeMayo released on his OnlyFans (yeah, really), DeMayo talks about Disney trying to discredit him after his exit because he wasn’t willing to play along with all the rules that Marvel had set up for him. DeMayo said in his statement about X-Men ’97:
In the end, the offenses Marvel and others have leaked are designed to distract you from what really offended them. Someone like me dared to speak truth to people like them. They wanted me to be the Black stamp of approval on this project, I declined. They wanted to erase aspects of my personality that clashed or proved inconvenient with the misguided narratives they wanted to establish. I declined. They tried to intimidate me with both explicit and implied threats. I was not intimidated. Everything they have done since then has been designed not just to silence me and smear me, but to crush me and to remind me to know my role.
DeMayo is said to be pursuing legal action against Disney with his lawyer saying that the NDA that Disney forced DeMayo to sign ‘obviously violated basic California law’.
So far, neither DeMayo nor his lawyer have named names when it comes to the higher ups at Disney who they are deeming responsible for this whole fiasco, but it’s expected that they’ll reveal them soon enough should this thing go further.
As of now, Disney is yet to release a statement, but the opinion on DeMayo is currently divisive to say the least.
As of now, you can still catch DeMayo’s work as X-Men ’97 is now streaming on Disney+.
