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E! Online Celeb Courthouse 4/10/01
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation v. Marvel Enterprises, Tribune Entertainment, et al.
Filed: April 10, 2001
U.S. District Court, Manhattan
Status: Approximately 13 minutes after Fox filed the suit, Marvel filed a countersuit claiming Fox's action is without merit because Mutant X is totally different from the X-Men property in terms of character likenesses, character names, character personalities, underlying premise and individual episode stories. Marvel also claims it cannot infringe its own trademarks. The comic book company seeks a declaratory judgment from the court that it did nothing wrong.
Marvel also claims Fox's action was deliberately timed to screw Mutant X show producers. The television series is scheduled to begin filming June 4 for broadcast this fall.
In August 2001, a federal judge allowed production on Mutant X to continue. But the ruling came after Marvel made several changes to its live-action series, including altering the show's logo so it doesn't resemble the one in the X-Men movie.
A week later, Fox filed new motions in the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals seeking to prevent Tribune Entertainment from using Mutant X as the show's title.
On March 3, 2003, Fox and Marvel jointly announced they had "amicably" settled the suit.
Terms of the settlement are confidential, but in a statement, the the studio and comic-book company said they had "amicably resolved our differences" and were looking forward to "expanding the relationship between Fox and Marvel."
The two entited recently collaborated to produce the box-office hit Daredevil (which already has two separate spinoffs in the works) and the would-be summer blockbuster X2, the sequel to X-Men.
The Case: Adam Xero. Shadowfox. Trinity. Fuse. Could they be next year's Halloween-costume craze? Not if 20th Century Fox has anything to say about it.
In a 29-page complaint charging breach of contract, unfair competition, copyright infringement and deceptive trade practices, Fox, which produced the 2000 summer blockbuster X-Men, seeks to bar Marvel Entertainment and Tribune Entertainment from producing a syndicated live-action TV series called Mutant X, featuring the aforementioned heroes.
While Marvel created both X-Men and Mutant X, Fox claims it actually has veto power when it comes to any live-action property relating to X-Men. The movie studio is crying foul at Marvel and Tribune (the show's syndicator) and their strategy to sell the Mutant X property. "They [Marvel and Tribune] are attempting inextricably to link Fox's X-Men with their Mutant X show, so as to capitalize on and exploit the significant success of the X-Men feature film franchise," according to court papers. Fox estimates it has ponied up $90 million to date to market X-Men.
The suit details "uncanny" similarities between the two projects, including logos, artwork and even font color.
Fox's biggest beef, however, is the concept. "Mutant X is essentially a thinly disguised version of the X-Men concept, themes and characters, and that therefore, Marvel's proceeding with this project would infringe upon Fox's intellectual property rights," the lawsuit reads.
"The basic premise...is identical to the X-Men story line: A superintelligent and wealthy 'good' mutant seeks out young mutants, trains them to use their powers and protects them from a potentially hostile world. In this venture, they are opposed by rival 'bad' mutants and humans who seek to eliminate or to control them."
Fox's complaint also describes the Mutant X characters as being copycats of the X-Men. Comparisons are made between the X-Men's leader, Professor X, and Adam Xero, the Mutant X father figure. Likewise, Fox finds Mutant X's Shadowfox to have raw strength, animal instincts and the tendency to erupt into "feral rage" similar to the characteristics of the well-known Wolverine. The studio points out that even the evil politicians hold the same office: Mutant X's villain is Senator Noah Kilmartin, X-Men's, Senator Robert Kelly.
Not only does Fox accuse Marvel of jumping on the mutant bandwagon, but the studio uses the suit to rub Marvel's nose in previous failures. "The blockbuster status of the live-action X-Men was a welcome change for Marvel, which to that point had not enjoyed the same success in the live-action treatments of its characters some of its competitors had--for example, with the Superman and Batman film franchises (Superman and Batman are characters owned by DC Comics, Marvel's chief competitor)."
Sidebar: While Fox finds fault with Mutant X's...well, everything, the TV show's premise differs greatly from the comic book's. The comic-book series, which launched in the 1990s, focuses on the adventures of the X-Men in an alternate dimension in which the characters are all the same, but their story lines are completely different. For instance, in the Mutant X world, Storm, the weather manipulator, became a vampire after getting bitten by Dracula. She now goes by the colorful alias Bloodstorm. Professor X and Cyclops--tried and true good guys in the X-Men universe--are despicable crooks in the Mutant X reality. (The comic book, ironically enough, is already slated for cancellation.)
Status: Approximately 13 minutes after Fox filed the suit, Marvel filed a countersuit claiming Fox's action is without merit because Mutant X is totally different from the X-Men property in terms of character likenesses, character names, character personalities, underlying premise and individual episode stories. Marvel also claims it cannot infringe its own trademarks. The comic book company seeks a declaratory judgment from the court that it did nothing wrong.
Marvel also claims Fox's action was deliberately timed to screw Mutant X show producers. The television series is scheduled to begin filming June 4 for broadcast this fall.
In August 2001, a federal judge allowed production on Mutant X to continue. But the ruling came after Marvel made several changes to its live-action series, including altering the show's logo so it doesn't resemble the one in the X-Men movie.
A week later, Fox filed new motions in the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals seeking to prevent Tribune Entertainment from using Mutant X as the show's title.
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