Breaking Down Beau DeMayo’s Firing From Marvel Studios
SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA – JULY 21: Beau DeMayo participates in the Marvel Studios’ Animation presentation during San Diego Comic-Con 2022 on July 21, 2022 in San Diego, California. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney)
News hit earlier this week that X-Men ’97 lead writer Beau DeMayo had been fired from Marvel Studios just ahead of the animated series hitting Disney Plus. Details on his exit still remain unclear, but we’ll try to break down what happened today.
DeMayo was the main writer on the first two seasons of the animated show, but will not be continuing into the planned third season. He’s been one of Marvel’s go-to scribes in the post-Endgame era, having also worked in Moon Knight and tried to crack the Blade script in late 2022 amid a big production shake-up. However, DeMayo knocked on Marvel Studios’ door with a troubled history at Netflix’s The Witcher, where he accused the other staff writers of disliking and dismissing the source material and being accused in return of being “emotionally and physically abusive.”
Though the firing was reported this week, it seems like it happened early the week before, and caught DeMayo in the middle of booking interviews to promote X-Men ’97. His company email was deactivated and his Instagram profile was deleted. It’s a highly unusual move right ahead of the premiere, but even more suspicious has been the deafening silence around it. All parties involved have not responded to repeated requests for comment from the press.
Apparently, DeMayo was very hard to work with, Jeff Sneider reported via his newsletter. DeMayo was described to him as “impossible to work with” and “an absolute nightmare to work with on a daily basis”. In addition, the writer had also set up a non-explicit OnlyFans account where, in addition to sharing some of the art he was working with, also posted shirtless pictures of himself. Disney execs, according to Sneider, found this “creepy”. (The publication Out ran a profile on him over a year ago titled “Meet Beau DeMayo, the Sexy, Gay Marvel Writer & Showrunner to Know”.)
But it all goes back to the timing of the firing. DeMayo’s behavior had been bothering the leadership for a while, it seems, so why do it now? It’s a move reminiscent of Victoria Alonso’s Marvel exit a year ago, but that was attributed to both her involvement with Argentina 1985 and the underperformance of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and it happened after both of those movies came out. Doing this right before the X-Men series comes out makes it sound like there was a final straw that finally broke the camel’s back, which seems to be the latest instance of Marvel getting rid of some of the most problematic people in their HQ. Victoria Alonso and Eric Hauserman Carroll were on the chopping block before.
The second season of X-Men ’97 was written a while ago and it’s currently in development, possibly releasing within the next year. Marvel seems to be high on the first season, which could have a very warm reception from fans when it finally premieres on March 20.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
