Mm-hmm.

So we didn't really have a sense of how this was going out to literally hundreds of millions of people who were watching the show and actually being affected by it, which is just, just, like, it's mind-blowing.

It's really surreal how, how special that feels.

'Cause we went through the same thing.

I was, we were talking about being about...

We met out here.

W- we grew up other places.

Yeah.

Executive producers are Julia Lewald and also Eric Lewald.

First season really just laid out, uh, that this was continuation of the old s- series and made the, and made the transition, which took eight or 10 episodes.

It was beautifully done.

Mm-hmm.

And then this, this season they really got into the Apocalypse story and are playing that all the way out to the end.

W- so next season I think it's going to be more, I say, more varied.

You're gonna get to s- spend a little more time with some of the characters off to the side, not in such a ...

Mm.

And then pull stuff, like, from reference books, from the books to flesh it out.

And so we just, we just were looking at the characters and saying, "How can we most, make the most dramatic story for her or for him?" And w- And that's how, that's why there's enough different and original stories in that, that aren't, like, a direct, uh, adaptation, like Days of Future Past or, or the Phoenix stories, which we're, we're obvi- obviously we're trying to adapt those.

Although, we had to do those a bit differently because we had different characters.

I guess I'm just interested in that line and, and exploring that.

That, that was absolutely all the executives, uh, Brad and Dana, who've been running the show from the start, uh, they understood that they wanted this to be a continuation.

And so they wanted it to, say someone coming new to the old epis- series and then g- going to this, this could be, uh, episode 77, the old series.

They could make it look like anything today.

Challenge

...

I have the crusty old man problem of, of when I was in charge of the, the, the scripts back then, the, a lot of the writers loved the books.

And so they all had, "Well, you know, I've got these like 23 different mutants I wanna put in my episode, and they're just so cool.

Their powers are so cool, and I wanna showcase all of them." And I'm saying, "Look, we've got budget for, like, two guests." It had-

Mm-hmm.

And okay, they're working with the composer as, and they kept on saying, "You know, that isn't intense enough.

That isn't, that isn't X-Men enough.

What is it about the X-Men, in your mind, that resonates so deeply?

My line is, and I hold to this, is that they're big fans.

flashy powers, there are fights in the sky, people are in bright costumes, but it comes down to each character's humanity.

Yes, the ones on the team happened to have a mutancy that they discovered as they were growing up, but it's each person's humanity.

And that is where the conflict and the characters come from.

The first season.

You didn't open with Magneto and Xavier going at each other.

You opened instead with people watching Sabretooth.

We loved reading.

Yeah.

And, and I don't know how, how effective or good a storyteller I was growing up.

I liked, I liked to tell stories, and somebody pointed out some, uh, it was, I think it was one of our favorite business podcast people recently, that, that the real gi- you know, wh- when everything's becoming automated, the real gift becomes if you're selling your business or you're, you're, you're make- It's, it's p- like pitching in Hollywood.

If you know how to tell a story and involve your audience and get them to go where you want them to go, which is m- much of the challenge of storytelling, um, that, that he found it the single most important thing to have as a businessman.

And I'm thinking back to it.

I said, "You know, how did we, how did we break in out here where we don't know anybody, and we're from, you know, f- as far they're concerned, the far side of the moon, and-"

Hmm.