welcome back to new rock stars I'm Eric Voss and what the f is happening with Marvel firing Bo Deo head riter of X-Men 97 this is a news story that we have been quietly watching for months now hearing all kinds of rumors but in the past 24 hours Marvel was forced to finally break its silence on the reasons they say we're behind this move and Bodo has responded and this video explaining all of it is a bit outside of the film analysis perview of new rock stars but there is so much noise out there that it's very difficult to Parts together the timeline which sources to trust which statements are in response to what other statements and how this affected the X-Men 97 series that we saw and what we may see in season 2 and the new rockstars team felt that we found ourselves in a unique position to properly break down the timeline and to try to help viewers contextualize this story this is a news format that we are going to try every now and then that we for now are calling what the is happening okay so Xmen 97 was in development with Marvel Studios ever since 2019 Marvel animation wanted to revive the animated Xmen series that ran from 1992 to 1997 on Fox kids and then after they made that decision in November 2020 B Deo was brought in by Marvel to pitch on this series this was after he had worked with the writing staff for moonnight Deo had also written two episodes for The Witcher on Netflix one in season 1 and another in season two we'll get to that later and wrote the screenplay for the animated spin-off The Witcher nightmare of the wolf he had also written two episodes of of Star Trek Strange New World season 1 Deo was also one of the screenwriters that Marvel Studios brought in to do a draft of their long and development blade film in November 2021 Deo was announced as the showrunner for this project X-Men 97 and later Marvel unveiled character art at San Diego ComiCon in July 2022 work had already begun at that point on a second season and deo's fame had increased as a fast advancing screenwriter speaker at panels and he was known for having a very active social media front posting all kinds of content including some Fitness related posts Out magazine called B Deo in 2022 quote the sexy gay Marvel writer and showrunner to know and Deo also ran a non-explicit only fans account under the username Bon fans and trust me all this is relevant to this story so February 15th 2024 Marvel Studios released a trailer for X-Men 97 and announced its release date of March 20th 2024 Bodo leads the charge to promote the series on social media and then March 12th 2024 The Hollywood Reporter reports that bod Deo was fired by Marvel and Disney earlier that week and we're talking less than two weeks before the series would be releasing reasons for the firing at the time were not given but speculation began including B deo's social media posts his only fans account and all kinds of unconfirmed Gossip that he was difficult to work with but March 20th 2024 X-Men 97 premiered and fans loved it new rockstars did all kinds of coverage on how great this show was yet months went by with no information from Marvel or from from bod Deo so we at new rockstars decided to reference the fact that he was fired from the show but we had no further update beyond that throughout all this Bodo continued tweeting about the show giving behind the scenes insights into the writing into the production but he never responded to questions as to why he was fired Marvel continued celebrating the show's success but interestingly omitted Bodo from behind the scenes featurettes on the show and their making of assembled documentary which focused more on Brad wibom and supervising producer Jay ctera for what it's worth when I interviewed Jay ctera before the season came out in early March castorena praised bodo's work on the series and didn't seem too hesitant to credit him also for what it's worth a number of the more public voice actors who worked in the show positively interacted with too on Twitter but we did not hear anything from the writers or from the animators who work directly with Bo on the Xmen 97 production so after the season wrapped in July 17th 2024 Xmen 97 was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding animated program B demo is on the list of producers August 9th through 11th of 2024 Bo Deo attends D20 23 and is seen walking the floor at Anaheim Convention Center d23 is hosted by Disney and has a very tight guest list if he was there representing X-Men 97 Disney would have had to evocate it and then August 12th 2024 bod Deo tweets that he was not invited to the emys by Marvel in Disney saying quote to those asking Marvel Disney has not reached out to arrange my attendance to the Emmys for the show I created # Xmen 97 and then August 15th Bo Deo tweets that he was stripped of his season into writing credits because he says of a recent Instagram post showing fan art of himself as a shirtless Cyclops that he had posted during pride month he said quote firstly I'm so grateful to have worked on # x97 collaborating with some amazingly talented folks creating this revival was a dream come true and the support fans of shown is so touching however I felt it pressing for me to speak up in the wake of leaving the show above is # Xmen fan art I posted on Instagram for gay pride in June on June 13th Marvel sent a letter notifying me that they'd stripped my season 2 credits due to the post sadly this is the latest in a troubling pattern I suffered while working on X-Men 97 and blade I'll have more to say soon but I must take a step back from social media and find a safer space for me to be out proud and nerdy stay tuned shortly after this on August 15th Marvel released an official statement from a spokesperson reported by The Hollywood Reporter The Hollywood Reporter wrote Marvel responded by saying that deo's behavior was the cause of his firing and for him losing his credits Mr Mayo was terminated in March 2024 following an internal investigation said a Marvel spokesperson in a statement quote given the egregious nature of the findings we severed ties with him immediately and he has no further affiliation with Marvel and then The Hollywood Reporter went on to say that sources say that following his exit an agreement was reached between the two parties over the issue of tweeting about the show something that Deo had continued to occasionally do in light of the breaches his credit for season 2 was removed while no details of the cause of the termination or the internal reviews have surfaced sources say it involved sexual misconduct now shortly after this Deo broke his 3-hour Silence from social media to react to variety's reporting tweeting quote the truth will be revealed after their Disney plus disaster Marvel wants to mislead with alleged contract breaches over tweets it's tragic it's come to this but unsurprising stay tuned now interestingly I have to note that Deo put his reaction tweet in quotes of his own as if this statement was in the article that he was linking below but it was not originally in that article variety later updated their article to add his reaction quote but it looks like he just kind of put it in quotes to quote himself and he wied it into existence by a variety later adding it to the article retroactively and then on Friday August 16th right before I started recording this video deo's attorney released a statement accusing Disney of gaslighting imp planting illegal unconscionable items in contracts hinting they have 100 incidents of Disney silencing the truth this way and I assume from this accusation that this attorney must be new because if such unconscionable items were in the contracts that Bodo signed why would any attorney let him sign that contract to begin with anyway this story is obviously still developing and there's a lot of attempts out there to control the narrative but here is what we can discern for now one Bodo was not fired solely because of Any suggestive posts or because he had an only fans that's not why he was fired initially two Marvel Studios probably would not have invited such a controversy by firing Deo if it was just for minor reasons they were that close to X-Men 97's release they wanted it all to be smooth and positive about the show they were clearly forced to act as a result of these claims coming to light and had they not acted it would have looked even worse for the studio when it came out if they had covered it up and allowed someone that they considered fireable at the time to rise in Fame and power as a result of this amazing show three in March 2024 Marvel and Deo agreed to some weird Arrangement where Deo could continue to tweet about X-Men 97 and that I think we can now say is a little sus from Marvel to used deo's social media following to help their show even when they knew that he was a guy that they considered to be firable and then in June Deo posted the Cyclops photo and according to too Marvel allegedly considered that an overreach of whatever this Twitter Arrangement was and then they decided then to strip too of his season 2 writing credits and uninvited him from the Emmys according to Deo now we don't know if Marvel could even do that because stripping him of work he had already done to scripts that's a whole separate issue that probably would have been arbitrated by the wga that would end up in Bodo getting rting credit no matter what he was accused of like Brian Singer was still the credited director of Bohemian rap city and he didn't even work most days on the set of that film also Emy invite lists are a confusing process that I actually have some experience in in a past job I used to have like who gets credited on emies for things and who actually gets to attend the ceremony is a big messy process and we have to remind ourselves that Disney did invite bod Deo to d23 just last week and finally bod deo's recent tweets just in the past week criticizing Marvel and Disney is what really led to Marvel Now releasing their statement that called Its Behavior egregious leading to The Hollywood Reporter citing some source using the word sexual misconduct so the Real Enemy of the public here is Twitter itself it brings out the worst in everyone now August 16th scooper Jeff Snider of the ins Snider reports further details now it's important to note that Snider is an independent reporter he's not affiliated with any major Outlet he doesn't have to worry about being cautious about what he says because there's not dozens of staffers whose jobs will be on the line if he's wrong and therefore he's not always accurate and he's actually known for a somewhat testy relationship with the studios and Industry publicists over what he reports but in the wild west of scoopers out there in the internet I have to say he at least has one of the better track records and here's what he reported he said B Deo allegedly sent nude photos of himself in sexually suggestive hero poses to several young male staffers working on X-Men 97 saying they could be used as inspiration according to Snyder Deo was asked to stop sending such photos but continued to do so Jeff Snider also reports an incident that involved Bo Deo groping an assistant on multiple occasions and that he was both emotionally and physically abusive to staffers so from here we have to step back and give some background context on Deo that originally I wasn't going to include but I think we have to mention it back in October 2022 B Deo had gotten into an online beef with a writer named Matthew deam brosio who wrote along with Deo on season 2 of The Witcher on Netflix too in Fall 2022 was joining the general online dog compiling on the quality of The Witcher series on Twitter suggesting it had dropped off after he left it which is pretty unprofessional for writers to do so Dan brosio brought back up a controversy Deo was involved with when they were both working on season 2 in season two of The Witcher Deo wrote an episode where a gay character escoll was killed off from an infection which was pretty controversial for a number of reasons and you can actually see various statements that Deo and de brosio had made about this plot decision and things that de brosio claimed Deo had said in this article from fandm wire fandom wire is another outlet that does not have the same Authority and credibility of The Hollywood Reporter variety Entertainment Weekly and other major trades because arguably a he said he said beef between TV writers at that time probably fell beneath the threshold of news and Phantom wi only published that article in April 2024 looking back on it but one thing that dambrosio tweeted at the time that we believe is now newsworthy and relevant to the current discussion was this this writer said quote if I were unceremoniously fired from a job for being both emotionally and physic physically abusive I'd probably focus on getting help instead of constantly bringing up my involvement with said job and he said this on October 23rd 20122 this was over a year and a half before anything about Bodo came up for XMen 97 so therefore we are seeing a possible pattern where bod Deo engaged in some kind of behavior on two different shows for two different Studios this isn't just about Disney this is about Bo and the second of those Productions with Marvel investigated and found his behavior egregious and quickly fired him but they did so quietly without publicizing a reason and Deo refused to stop tweeting about it so when it comes to Marvel we're looking at two breaches here the first breach was whatever Behavior Deo did to get fired in March 2024 we read Jeff Snider's claims and I can confirm that we have heard similar Rumors in the past but it was from a source who did not want to go on the record or even speak on background so new rock stars at that time decided to wait for Marvel Studios to respond which is why we're only making this video now the second breach with Deo was after Marvel's post-firing Twitter understanding with Deo that Deo could continue to tweet about the show but then over the summer something Deo tweeted led to Marvel cutting off his future credits to the show but that's according to too it may have just been Marvel saying like did you have to include one that made you a hunky Jack Cyclops we don't know this second one could just be Deo trying to suggest that Marvel fired him for something as harmless as posting fan art and suggestive Fitness videos but that is not the case he was fired for other Behavior while he was working in his capacity as showrunner for XMen 97 if Jeff Snider's claims about Deo sending staffers photos of himself in suggestive hero poses if those claims are true it does put into a new context some of what we picked up on at new rockstars in our episode analyses of the character design and animation on the show like a number of shots definitely framed in the shot and focused on characters anatomies in certain ways that I would often call out with a shout out to the creators saying like we see what you're doing at the time these seemed like commentaries on the ways that the '90s run and various animated titles over the decades intentionally or unintentionally sexualize the characters and the way audiences intentionally or unintentional I sexualize them from the viewers perspective and these instances in X-Men 97 I have to say were just not a big deal it's not what the show was all about and I think it was probably more a result of me looking too much into things but there's also a history in this industry of Animation actually being targeted at adults from Betty Boop to heavy metal to Jessica Rabbit and I and various people in my life have worked long enough in this industry specifically in animation production to know that story artists and animators and producers occasionally will use themselves in recordings of their appearances and gestures as reference points for animators but that is not what this is and we cannot let that history confuse what really does look like a separate instance in which misconduct is being alleged the quality and the success of X-Men 97 is not solely the work of one Creator clearly Bodo is a talented writer and a talented Storyteller with a lot to say and it's a shame that Twitter is bringing out the worst of him it's something that Twitter does to all of us X-Men 97 is clearly a quality show a successful show but it was not the work of one Creator it was a collaboration among several artists the title itself is a continuation from a '90s series created by Julia and Eric lald so I beg all of you as this story is continuing to develop pause before you post or repost the claims of anyone Source before all parties have had the chance to respond before considering the cont context and the timeline that these statements are being made before you consider how your posting could be serving the agenda of someone you don't really know despite how effective that person may be and making themselves look like a victim on social media and I also want to say that anything new rockstars did to focus on the sexualization of some characters in our analysis of X-Men 97 or just playfully joke about the gossip around Bodo if that ended up hurting anyone who worked on Xmen 97 I sincerely apologize and I hope anyone out there can respect that our patients to report on story came out of an abundance of caution to not hurt anyone further and in the meantime to just celebrate the great Artistry that were achieved by the hundreds of people involved with this series and that is what the is happening with Bodo and will likely continue to happen in the days ahead thank you everyone for your patience with this video please take care of each other out there follow all three of the channels in the new rock stars Network you can follow me at eaos and we'll see you next time bye