With just over a week to go before Marvel's X-Men '97 premieres on Disney+, writer Beau DeMayo was given the boot.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, DeMayo, who has found success at Marvel as a writer on Moon Knight and early drafts of the much-anticipated Blade reboot, had already completed work on both seasons 1 and 2 of the new X-Men animated series but will not attend the March 13 Hollywood premiere.
It is unclear why Marvel and DeMayo parted ways, but his company email has been deactivated, and the cast and crew were told he was no longer a part of X-Men '97 — a continuation of the iconic '90s animated series that ran on Fox from 1992-97. So far, Marvel has given no reason for the termination.
As an adopted Black gay man, DeMayo hasn't shied away from talking about his identity in the press. He told The Direct that his deep affinity for the X-Men stems from relating to the characters who were judged harshly by society for being different.
"…as I realized that I was gay, and as I even just got an understanding of what racism was—I was growing up with white people who accepted black people, so like I never really understood racism as a thing until I got older, he explained. 'I was like a late bloomer. I will tell you, X-Men comics were probably my lifeline to understanding how to navigate [the world]."
Instagram (@beau_demayo)
He got initial buzz within the queer community when he first started working with Marvel, with PRIDE's sister publication Out dubbing him the "Gay Marvel Writer & Showrunner to Know." It also helped that he used to post shirtless gym photos on his social media — his Instagram account has since been deactivated — alongside content about the shows he was working on, and at one point ran a tame, non-explicit OnlyFans account.
DeMayo said that watching the original X-Men: The Animated Series while he was growing up helped him "understand my identity" and admitted that the very first script he ever wrote as a teenager was X-Men fan fiction.
"Anyone who feels different, we all have a Magneto inside of us, and we all have a Charles Xavier," he said. "We all have a part of us that wants to burn it all down, and there's a part of us who wants to find the compromise and build it up. And those comics really helped me understand my identity."
On top of his work at Marvel, DeMayo also worked on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Netflix's live-action The Witcher starring Henry Cavill, and the animated film The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf.
This story is still developing…
