X-Men: The Animated Series Producer Confirms Revival Talks With Disney

The creative team behind X-Men: The Animated Series has “made conversation” with Disney about reuniting the cast of the beloved ’90s animated series for a limited revival that could premiere on Disney+, series producer and director Larry Houston confirms in a new interview. Airing 76 episodes across five seasons between 1992 and 1997, the acclaimed and highly-rated Saturday morning cartoon was embraced by audiences both old and new when it was made available for streaming on the Disney+ platform in November. There have been “rumors galore” about a decades-later X-Men sequel, according to Wolverine actor Cal Dodd, but “nothing is coming to fruition” despite Houston’s attempts at a continuation.

“We’ve had talks, but that’s about it,” Houston said Friday during a virtual Wizard World panel. “We’ve made conversation and it’s up to them to make the decision, but we’ve let them know that we’re all available for whatever they want to do in the future.”

The “semi-retired” Houston describes X-Men as the one series he would come out of retirement for “if we could do a special, a one-off episode, or a five-part episode.”

“Whatever they wanted to do if we had all the original team,” he continued. “That’s what I would come out of retirement for.”

Added cast member George Buza, who voiced the bespectacled and blue-furred Beast for the duration of the series, “We would all love to do it.” Co-star Chris Britton, the voice behind villain Mr. Sinister, said a dozen new half-hour episodes “would be fabulous.”

“And it would cost them absolutely nothing. Kind of like what they pay now,” Dodd added. “Lovely series, though. It’s nice to be able to get talent like that for that amount of money.”

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter in June 2019, Houston said the attempted revival would “continue where we left off” with the same aesthetic and tone that made X-Men: The Animated Series a pioneer in animated superhero television.

The original series brought together Wolverine, Beast, Cyclops (Norm Spencer), Storm (Iona Morris and Alison Sealy-Smith), Jean Grey (Catherine Disher), Rogue (Lenore Zann), Gambit (Chris Potter and Tony Daniels), and Jubilee (Alyson Court) as a team of mutants assembled by Professor Charles Xavier (Cedric Smith), who led the superheroes in protecting a world that hates and fears them.

All five seasons of X-Men: The Animated Series are now streaming on Disney+ in addition to newly-added live-action X-Men feature films.