Bob Skir on "X-Men: Evolution
Rembrandt
Tuesday, August 22, 2000 10:08 PM

Bob Skir, who developed and wrote the story bible for "X-Men: Evolution"
talks about the project at Coming Attractions' Test Pattern.  Here's what the article said:

"When Marvel Comics and Warner Bros. Television decided to greenlight a new animated series based on the X-Men comic series they had two ways they could go. The first option would have been to pick up where the feature film was to leave off, and create the series as sort of a sequel to the movie. The other idea was to take the X-Men back to their roots and follow them at a time in their lives when they first discovered and learned to develop their powers. Warner Bros. wanted to explore the latter. Fortunately Robert Skir, the man they hired to develop the series, felt exactly the same way.

Both Warner Bros. and Robert wanted to take the X-Men "back to the egg." And in doing so they also made the decision to use traditional cell animation, which Robert believes is not only a good idea, but encouraging given the addition of Phil Roman to the production team. Roman has quite an impressive resume which includes a position as executive animation producer on The Simpsons. His involvement, as well as that of Batman and Mr. Freeze writer/producer Boyd Kirkland as associate producer, were enough to convince Skir that the series was in good hands. After developing and writing the series bible Robert Skir left the series in March. "[I] laid a good track," he says, having handed the writing duties over to Bob Forward and Greg Johnson. He feels confident Warner Bros. decision to focus on the X-Men in their younger, formative years will help the younger audience to identify with, rather than look up to the X-Men as heroes. To be able to look at these young superheroes dealing with their gifts and their differences and say "that's me there."

Imagine a young Scott Sommers saying to himself, "Oh my God I've got these weird eyes. What do I do with it?" Imagine watching Kitty Pryde, Nightcrawler, Jean Grey, Cyclops and Rogue all attending Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters and learning to control their powers (with a little help from Storm and Wolverine) and you've got a pretty good idea what to expect.

The series, consisting of about 13 episodes, is titled X-Men: Evolution and is set to premiere on Kids' WB on November 4, 2000, with five episodes to air in November and the rest in January and February. A full Voice Cast is available on the The Pazsaz Entertainment Network, and you can see more of the original concept art if you point your browsers to AmericanMule.com.

With the success of the live action movie and the recent ratings boost that followed for the re-runs of X-Men on Fox everyone working on this series is probably quite optimistic at this point. I know Robert Skir, though no longer involved in the production, thinks "It's going to be a terrific series," and suggests the team he turned his concepts over too should have a "hell of a good time with the series and deliver a good show.'"