Murphy's Multiverse

Tag: Marvel Television

  • Marvel’s Animated Spider-Man Project Gets New Release Date

    Marvel’s Animated Spider-Man Project Gets New Release Date

    As part of a slew of announcements made during 2021’s first-ever Disney Plus Day, Marvel Studios revealed the development of Spider-Man: Freshman Year. Originally teased as a canonical series that would serve as the prequel to the events of Captain America: Civil War, the project morphed into a multiverse adventure and was retitled Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.

    As explained at SDCC ’22, the series, developed and written by Jeff Trammell, will feature a slew of MCU supporting characters such as Doctor Strange and Matt Murdock, voiced by Charlie Cox, as well as characters who have yet to debut in the MCU such as Harry Osborn, Nico Minoru and Amadeus Cho. It was also revealed that it would feature multiple villains from Spidey’s Rogues Gallery including Unicorn, Chameleon, Scorpion, Speed Demon, Tarantula, Rhino, and Doc Ock as well as Norman Osborn. And as of late 2023, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man was included on Disney’s official 2024 D+ slate with a rumored November release in the works. It was recently revealed, however, that the series would not hit the streaming service in 2024 and now we may know when to expect it.

    According to an update to Disney’s All Access page, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man will debut on Disney Plus on January 25, 2025.

    It follows the pattern that you see in [Captain America:] Civil War. Down to Peter getting the broken Blu-ray player from the trash and he walks into his department for the famous moment where Tony Stark is waiting for him to offer him the stark internship and take him to Berlin. But because of things that happen in the multiverse because of new, random occurrences, it’s not Tony Stark who’s waiting for him there. It’s Norman Osborn and that sends his life in an unexpected trajectory that collides him with many unexpected characters in the Marvel universe.

    -Brad Winderbaum on Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man

    With the move, Marvel Animation’s Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man and Eyes of Wakanda are now tentatively dated until January 25, 2025 and August 6, 2025, respectively.

  • What to Expect from Marvel Studios at D23

    What to Expect from Marvel Studios at D23

    Just two weeks after Marvel Studios made a splash at SDCC ’24 by announcing Robert Downey Jr. and the Russos were returning to the MCU in Avengers: Doomsday, Kevin Feige will be back on stage with more to share at D23. Marvel will have two chances to wow D23 attendees this weekend with a portion of Disney’s Entertainment Showcase carved out for their live-action slate and a separate panel dedicated to Marvel Animation.

    Before the festivities get started, let’s take a look at what’s likely to go down in Anaheim.

    Marvel Animation Sneak Peek (Saturday-12:45 PM PDT/3:45 PM EDT)

    On Saturday afternoon, the newly formed Marvel Animation studio will have its first D23 solo panel. There’s not much guesswork to be done here in terms of what to expect because Disney already paid it out on the official D23 website.

    Eyes of Wakanda and Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man were included on the studio’s 2024 slate as shared by Disney in late 2023 and there’s still plenty of time for both projects to steam, especially since Eyes of Wakanda only consists of four episodes. Teaser trailers will almost certainly be debuted for both and will likely also make their way online.

    Given the success of X-Men ’97, the hour-long panel will certainly feature a heavy dose of news on Season 2. With the second season already well into production, a teaser isn’t out of the question nor is a release date. Like Season 2 of X-Men ’97, Season 3 of What If…? is deep into production if not already complete. “What If…? Season Three is — that might be the one that comes out next, in terms of animation,” said Marvel exec Brad Winderbaum in May 2024. The studio already rolled out a teaser for Season 3 following Season 2’s streaming finale, so there’s no reason to think they won’t AT LEAST show that to the audience.

    We’re actually close to completing that one, and it really feels like you’ve gone through this amazing emotional experience with Uatu, in a way that’s… What’s great about The Watcher is that he presents himself as uncaring, and cold, and just an observer, but he cares more than everybody [and] anybody. That is on full display in that third season.

    -Brad Winderbaum on What If…? Season 3

    Outside of what’s promised in the description, only Marvel Zombies is known to be far enough down the road to be included in the panel; however, more than any other type of project, animated projects are far, far easier to keep under wraps so it’s entirely in the realm of possibilities that the folks at Marvel Animation have some tricks up their sleeve for their first big panel.

    Disney Entertainment Showcase (Friday-7 PM PDT/10 PM EDT)

    Friday night’s Entertainment Showcase is a two-hour-long presentation that will feature projects from across all of Disney’s major studios. That means Pixar, Lucasfilm, 20th Century Studios and Walt Disney Animation Studios will all join Marvel Studios in showcasing their upcoming theatrical and streaming slates. So while Kevin Feige won’t have an hour to himself like he did in San Diego, he’ll have a big chunk of time and since it’s Disney’s event, he’ll actually have as much time as he wants (in 2022 the two-hour panel took longer than two hours). Marvel Television will take the spotlight, especially after not being included in Feige’s hour-long SDCC panel but that doesn’t mean there might not be some update on the film slate. Here’s what to expect:

    Agatha All Along

    Kathryn Hahn‘s WandaVision spinoff is on deck for the studio and no insider information is necessary to know that Agatha All Along will be a focal point of Marvel’s portion of the panel. With the two-episode premiere just six weeks away, a new trailer for the streaming series is due. It’s likely a good chunk of the cast will be on hand to bow, wave and, more importantly, do the press line following the panel.

    In Agatha All Along, the infamous Agatha Harkness finds herself down and out of power after a suspicious goth Teen helps break her free from a distorted spell. Her interest is piqued when he begs her to take him on the legendary Witches’ Road, a magical gauntlet of trials that, if survived, rewards a witch with what they’re missing. Together, Agatha and this mysterious Teen pull together a desperate coven, and set off down, down, down The Road…

    -Official Synopsis, Agatha All Along

    Daredevil: Born Again

    Charlie Cox has already confirmed that he’ll be in Anaheim to promote Daredevil: Born Again and it would be shocking if co-star Vincent D’Onofrio weren’t there alongside him. With the 9-episode streaming series set to premiere in March 2025 and with production having wrapped several months ago, there’s certainly a trailer ready to roll. The question here is whether or not it’s a D23 exclusive for those in attendance or it the studio will release it to the public. Given the hype around the show, it would make quite a bit of sense to let it out into the wild but Disney isn’t always in the business of making sense.

    Longtime rivals Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) and Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio) try to leave behind their darker alter-egos to serve the people of New York only to have their pasts catch up to them.

    Synopsis, Daredevil: Born Again

    Ironheart

    First announced at Disney’s 2020 Investor Day, Ironheart has been in the can for a couple of years and still has no release window. Marvel Studios actually rolled out a first look at the project during Disney’s 2022 Entertainment Showcase at D23 and it looked like a lot of fun! At the time, Feige explained that the focus on “dark arts vs. technology” would be the “unique calling card” of the series which will pit Dominique Thorne‘s Riri Williams–introduced in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever–against Anthony Ramos‘s Parker Robbins, aka The Hood. “Parker believes truly that what he is doing is good,” Ramos shared at 2022’s D23. “He loves his people. I’m over-trying to dance around the plot because I can’t give you all the deets! Parker kicks ass. I don’t know if I can say that, but I said it already.” An in-person exclusive trailer is all but a sure thing and it wouldn’t be asking too much for Feige to reveal a release window for the series which had been targeting a September 2025 launch.

    Charming teenage super genius Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne) returns from MIT to her hometown of Chicago in her iron suit and begins to unravel threads that bring danger and adventure to her doorstep.

    -Synopsis, Ironheart

    Wonder Man

    Despite having completed production earlier this year, some fans still doubt that Wonder Man truly exists. While Marvel Studios exec Stephen Broussard confirmed its existence earlier this year, Wonder Man has never been mentioned by Feige at any conventions so a simple logo reveal and release window would be great; however, given it’s been wrapped for some time, it’s quite possible a sizzle reel or teaser could be shown to those in attendance.

    [Wonder Man will] be definitely influenced by the comics. One of the things that we’re excited about it is that it’s going to feel very unique. It’s not going to feel like anything you’ve quite seen in the MCU before. And the kind of stories we can tell on Disney+, which has been fun. Like streaming, serialized storytelling is a totally different muscle. So, we’re having a blast making that one.

    –Stephen Broussard on Marvel Television’s Wonder Man

    Vision

    Likely to join Wonder Man on Disney Plus in 2026, the Paul Bettany-led WandaVision spinoff was recently confirmed by Feige. It is expected to start production this Fall, so a title treatment and a release window are about all we might get unless Bettany is on hand to do a little song and dance.

    Future Streaming Projects

    Five streaming series is probably about all the studio will have time to discuss during its portion of the panel. However, if the studio is ready to move ahead with the second season of Hawkeye, having Jeremy Renner step on stage to announce it would certainly bring down the house. Rumors have the sophomore season headed to D+ for Christmas 2026 which means it’s certainly not “too early” to confirm it’s in the works. With the Nova series not a top priority and Bob Iger‘s mandate to cut down on content now fully integrated into the way Marvel Studios does business, further announcement seem highly unlikely.

    Theatrical Slate

    Disney loves marching out cast members during their big fan event. In 2022, the casts of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and their two 2023 releases, Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, The Marvels all took the stage at D23. In addition, Feige used the big stage to announce the cast of what was then Captain America: New World Order, including the big surprise reveal that Tim Blake Nelson was returning to the MCU as Samuel Sterns.

    The core cast of Thunderbolts was also trotted out on the stage by Feige with some fun concept art displayed on the big screen behind them. What’s of interest here is that both Cap 4 and Thunderbolts were first announced at SDCC ’22 but Marvel saved the big cast reveals for D23. The One Above All may make the same move here, using the closing moments of his time on stage to bring out the full casts of any or all of the studio’s upcoming projects such as The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Avengers: Doomsday and/or Avengers: Secret Wars. It’s also reasonable to think that Feige might make mention of the two 2026 Marvel Studios films that remain untitled.

    Murphy’s Multiverse will be providing full coverage and recaps of both panels this weekend so count on us to deliver all the news you need!

  • It’s Not All Connected: Marvel Exec Clarifies the Studio’s Recent Rebranding

    It’s Not All Connected: Marvel Exec Clarifies the Studio’s Recent Rebranding

    “Mr. Stark, you’ve become part of a bigger universe; you just don’t know it yet.” When Fury, Nicholas J. dropped that bomb on Tony Stark in the MCU’s first-ever post-credit scene in 2008’s Iron Man, the Marvel Cinematic Universe took flight. Over the next decade, the MCU expanded in ways nobody could have ever predicted. Through an onslaught of Easter eggs, cameos, name drops and references, the largest interconnected cinematic universe in Hollywood history became so popular that Anthony Mackie‘s Sam Wilson could show up in Ant-Man and everyone in the audience knew who he was….hell, they knew who Ant-Man was! So ingrained in the experience of the MCU was that connectivity that in 2018, Marvel published an MCU guidebook titled “It’s All Connected.” Fans fawned over every fragment of connectivity, theorizing which character might show up where and how each post-credit scene might set up the next big thing. Doctor Strange! Reed Richards! Mephisto! But then, a funny thing happened on the way to the Multiverse.

    With the dawn of Disney Plus, the rate of expansion of the MCU increased. New, unfamiliar characters were introduced, causing a sense of disorder and uncertainty among fans. Entropic chaos ensued. Once the strength of the franchise, the MCU’s connectivity–along with a few less-than-successful projects–quickly threatened to cripple it. As Bob Iger returned to Disney, Marvel’s top creatives began to formulate a response to the dilemma and by the time Echo debuted on Hulu and Disney Plus in January 2024 and fans were introduced to the Marvel Spotlight banner, the studio’s solution began to become clear: the MCU would no longer be all connected but rather, through a series of moves behind the scenes, become à la carte.

    Marvel Studios is now–at least in part–reborn. As the studio forges ahead through its uneven Multiverse Saga, fans will find themselves on more of a choose your own adventure journey that Marvel hopes will help keep attracting new viewers. Following Echo, X-Men ’97 became the first production to debut under the new Marvel Animation banner. This Fall, Agatha All Along will mark the debut of the resurrected Marvel Television banner. The hope, according to Marvel’s head of streaming, television and animation, Brad Winderbaum, “is to “signal to the general audience that we’re creating a lot of options, and you can follow your tastes within this brand.”

    There was a lot of pressure post-‘Avengers: Endgame’ on the public to feel obligated to watch absolutely everything in order to watch anything. Part of the rebranding was a signal to the general audience that we’re creating a lot of options, and you can follow your tastes within this brand. Some will be more comedic, some will be more dramatic, some will be animated, some will be live-action. Marvel is more than just one thing — it is actually many different genres that just happened to coexist in a single narrative.

    -Brad Winderbaum

    Even as the Mutliverse Saga moves ahead, the rebranding does not create different universes within the MCU. That would be messier and increase confusion. Instead, as Winderbaum points out, “the characters still live and breathe in the same universe, but the interconnectivity is not so rigid that you need to watch Project A to understand Project B.” In that sense, the experience, says Winderbaum, should become more akin to that enjoyed by comic book readers who can pick up a Captain America comic without worrying about what’s going on in the most recent run of The Avengers. “The hope is that, like the comics, you can just pop in anywhere and have a satisfying experience. We’re trying to dispel the idea that you need to do any kind of setup work to watch anything else.”

    Iger’s return to Disney also came with a mandate that some of the larger studios–Marvel included–pull back a bit on the quantity of their streaming output. According to Winderbaum, that’s something that Marvel Studios had already begun working on. So, in addition to the reduced pressure to watch everything because “it’s all connected”, there’s also a reduction in content which should add up to an increase in quality and, hopefully, a better experience for the audience. “We were already, as of two years ago, adapting our process from being, you know, fill the service as fast as possible no matter what, to a more considered approach,” said Winderbaum. “I really like the idea of two shows a year, especially because we are developing more than we make. We used to treat the shows like the features where we’re gonna make a show and that’s it, we’re going to hit a release date, hell or high water. Well, it’s hard to do for a two hour feature, it’s even harder to do for, six, seven, eight, nine hours. So now we have a more traditional approach.” And so while the studio may have a lot of projects in the pipeline–like the LONG-GESTATING Nova series–there’s no guarantee that they’ll hit D+ soon, if ever; only that if and when they do, they’ll have been carefully curated.

    Ultimately, the rebranding changes absolutely nothing for your average MCU superfan. The banner that hits the screen for a few seconds won’t stop the completist from watching everything and criticizing the VFX; however, the strategy behind the rebranding isn’t aimed at those fans but rather at drawing new viewers in without overwhelming them. For a studio that hopes they have a whole lot more stories to tell, that’s the only way to stay in the game for the long haul.

    Source: Variety