There’s only one thing that fans of the ever-expanding Marvel Cinematic Universe love more than the half-dozen or more projects that Marvel Studios puts out each year: rumors. The online dialogue about which characters might cameo in Marvel’s next project has grown to the point where fans often find themselves more excited about a character cameo than they are about the project’s lead character. Unfortunately, due to bogus rumors, changes during production and just plain poor theorizing, fans often find themselves frustrated when the thing they’ve imagined in their head doesn’t materialize in said project.
One such project that seems to have been the focus of just that type of speculation for quite some time now is the upcoming Marvel Studios Halloween Special, Werewolf By Night. It seems like every character from the horror corner of Marvel Comics from Blade, to Ghost Rider to Vampire By Night, has been discussed as possibly appearing in the project all while overlooking the titular character and the rest of the crew.
Following his voice-only cameo in Eternals, fans have been particularly eager to pin down Mahershala Ali’s next appearance as the aforementioned Daywalker and Werewolf By Night certainly became a sensible focal point of speculation for that appearance. Over the past several months, rumors first swirled that Ali’s character would indeed show up in the project; then, more recently, that due to scheduling conflicts, he would not. In an interview with One Take News, director Michael Giacchino was asked about those rumors and it turns out he’s been paying attention to the online discourse.
You know what, rumors are insanely inaccurate I would say…99.9% of the time. The thing about the Marvel Cinematic Universe is everyone thinks that every single thing is going to be connected. EVERY single thing. And it doesn’t mean that we’re not connected. But, I didn’t feel the need to blatantly say we were.
Michael Giacchino
We’ve run the numbers and it turns out Giacchino’s percentage is actually a little on the low side of things. And while the director didn’t ACTUALLY address whether or not Blade was on track to appear, he did go on to explain that part of what drew him to developing Werewolf By Night was the the character could exist in isolation in the comics and didn’t need to be a part of every event.
You know, every other show has done that and they’ve done it brilliantly and I thought “you know what?”, when I was a kid, I would pull a comic off the shelf and this particular Werewolf By Night issue had nothing to do with anything else in the Marvel Universe. What’s wrong with that? That’s okay! You know, they can all live together but we don’t need to always show them together. You know, let’s have a moment where we’re dealing with this. One of the shows that was a huge influence for me growing up was The Twilight Zone and what I loved about it was each one was its own thing and each story was something that you had to think about for days afterwards and I said “Let’s do that! Let’s just worry about this”. You know, in the future, who knows? We’ll see where the characters go, we’ll see where we take them but for now, let’s just worry about this one thing right here.
Michael Giacchino
Was Blade supposed to be in it? We don’t know. But we do know that he is not and that according to all the first reactions to the project, Giacchino seems to have made exactly the type of project he set out to: one that stands among the crowd of “Marvel formula” projects and that exists within its own little pocket of a much larger universe.
Werewolf By Night debuts on Disney Plus on Octobrer 7th.
Source: One Take News
