‘The Gifted’ Showrunner Matt Nix on What the Disney-Fox Merger Means for the X-Men TV Series

There’s been plenty of talk of what the 20th Century Fox and Disney merger could mean for the X-Men movies. But what about X-Men television?

Two X-Men television series debuted in 2017. Legion airs on cable network FX, while The Gifted airs on FOX. Both will see second seasons in 2018.

Could the merger mean big changes for The Gifted? ComicBook.com spoke to showrunner Matt Nix ahead of tonight’s season finale. Nix said the merger likely won’t affect Season Two since the deal still needs to go through regulation. Looking past that, he broke the question down into two parts. The first is what the merger could mean behind the scenes.

“We do find ourselves in a sort of odd position in being a show that was co-produced by two different companies that under this merger would now be the same company. So, that’s good,” Nix says. “The thing that would really change our lives and really change the show a lot would have been if Marvel wasn’t involved, you know what I mean? The fact is Jeph Loeb is an executive producer on the show. We talk to Jeph Loeb all the time. He’s weighing in. So under a merger, barring lots of executive changes or something, we’re talking to the same set of people, only they have a slightly different role in the corporate structure. For us anyway, we’re already pretty much doing things in a Marvel way.”

The other half of the equation is how the merger could affect things on the screen. A merger with Marvel could change The Gifted‘s position in relation to other projects, particularly the movies. It could also affect what intellectual properties the show is able to play with.

“The other side of it would be the way that our show kind of echoes and reflects what the movies are doing,” Nix explains. “It remains to be seen, in a universe where priorities around shared universes are different, how that relationship will evolve. So it could be, it’s like a whole new set of people and it’s like a whole new set of attitudes and it’s a whole new way of doing things. And we look at how Agents of SHIELD does things. That’s a different deal. So that’s that company.”

“And then the other question would be, and these are questions that are just completely unresolved at this point is, what would this mean for our access to certain kinds of characters, or storylines, or that kind of thing?” Nix adds. “And that would just have a lot to do with what would the merged companies plans be for the movies and do they see our show as a potential support for that? That would be my vote, right? Or do they see our show as something that just really needs to stay out of their way? Or somewhere in between.”

Nix says he doesn’t want The Gifted to imitate the movies, but he would like to establish a connection.

“Does that give me the opportunity to come in and say like, ‘Hey, let me set something up for your movie or let me echo your movie in some cool way.’ And if I could do that then that would be neat, because I’m generally just guided by, as a fan, what would I want to see? And what would I want? As a fan, I don’t want my TV show to do the same thing that my movie is doing. But at the same time, I don’t want my TV show to be just like, you know, completely unconnected or just totally the bastard stepchild of what my movies are doing either. So, I’m going to push for not bastard stepchild but also not trying to do the movies on television because I think both are bad ideas.”

The two-hour season finale of The Gifted airs tonight at 8 p.m. ET on FOX.