FXX Brings 'Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man', 'X-Men ‘97' To Cable For First Acquisitions Since 2022
They’re not there for long, but neither were the last shows to come to the channel
It seems the return of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia isn’t the only thing bringing life to FXX these days. Without much fanfare, the channel has new-to-the-network programming for the first time since 2022, airing Marvel Animation’s Disney+ originals X-Men ‘97 and Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, making their cable debuts.
For this week only, which began yesterday, two episodes of each show will air start at 5 PM Eastern, and because their runtimes were born in a streaming environment free from cable’s constraints, it causes them to have finishes and ensuing starts a bit off the clock, but finish with the second X-Men ‘97 episode around 7:30 PM Eastern, with “Motendo/Lifedeath Pt. 1” getting that cleaner finish time Tuesday, for example. With two ten-episode seasons getting two slots per day, the run ends Friday, July 4. Which means episodes 5-10 will be airing throughout the rest of the week. For a refresher on titles, your reminders are the related articles below.
New 'Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man' Featurette Showcases Heroic Friends; Episode Titles And First Clip Released
With less than a week until Marvel Animation’s Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man premieres on Disney+ on January 29, Marvel Studios is on a promotional blitz with a featurette, confirmation of its release schedule, and revealing the titles of the ten episodes in its first season.
Of course, a Spider-Man cartoon and the world of X-Men: The Animated series aren’t strangers to former Fox cable channels, with the Fox Kids-era Spider-Man cartoons (The Animated Series and Unlimited) and the latter aired reruns on Fox Family, which became ABC Family, which had pre-Jetix and Jetix-era airings of the shows until Fall 2006 made Jetix Toon Disney-exclusive. FXX almost dabbled in Marvel cartoons before, but much recently than that. They ordered a series in May 2017 centered around Deadpool and created by showrunners, executive producers, and writers Donald and Stephen Glover, just as their FX series Atlanta was getting hot. Within a year, the series was canceled before a premiere date could ever be set due to Taylor Swift-related creative differences.
The last FXX program added to the schedule for the first time was the animated original series Little Demon, starring and executive produced by Sunny star Danny DeVito and his daughter Lucy, also starring Aubrey Plaza which premiered in August 2022 and was ultimately disappeared in the May 2023 writeoffs massacre across Disney+ and Hulu. However, a few weeks before that, FXX did a similar stunt to what we’re seeing this week with the Hulu original Solar Opposites, giving the series created by Mike McMahan and the since-disgraced Justin Roiland its cable debut. However it hasn’t been back since. This year, Disney Channel has aired Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, and Pixar’s Win or Lose this year, at least of longform series. ABC has similarly aired the Hulu original Sterling K. Brown-led Paradise, and reality juggernaut The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.
As for how FXX will look after this week, or the week after Sunny’s season ends, well, the current schedule has movies in the morning, The Simpsons in the late morning and early afternoon, Bob’s Burgers from 3-6 PM, Family Guy from 6 PM to Midnight, Futurama from midnight to 2 AM, and then King of the Hill, which used to occupy the morning, until 4 AM. Still, it looks like they’re getting original programming back too, as the Welcome to Wrexham spinoff docuseries Necaxa, with Eva Longoria, will premiere on the network August 7 at 9 PM Eastern. She and the mothership’s star producers Rob Mac (fka Rob McElhenney) and Ryan Reynolds will produce the series, which follows her leading (and their supporting) efforts to revive Club Necaxa, a football team in Aguascalientes, Mexico that has faced decades of instability involving relocations and near-constant reinvention. The synopsis continues “Though its legacy has flickered in and out of the national spotlight, a passionate core of diehard supporters continues to believe, clinging to the dream that their beloved ‘Rayos’ will one day rise again.” Two episodes will air each Thursday for the first three weeks of the season, before finishing four weeks of single episodes that end on September 18.
Neve Campbell To Voice Polaris In 'X-Men ‘97'
Guess who opened his mouth again! And right on time really. Disgraced X-Men ‘97 creator Beau DeMayo has quashed a rumor brewed by a fake Marvel news account based on a report by scooper MyTimeToShineHello that Neve Campbell, star of the Scream franchise and the
Sources: ComicBook, The Hollywood Reporter