Marvel Is Going To Overhaul How It Makes TV
Marvel Studios has never followed the traditional TV-making model. The studio that brought such hits as WandaVision, Loki, and Moon Knight to life has never commissioned pilots but instead shot an entire series that cost hundreds of millions of dollars on the fly.
Likewise, the studio has eschewed showrunners in exchange for film executives. When something isn’t working, Marvel has relied on postproduction and reshoots.
Following the uneven results of its latest Disney+ series, including the almost universally panned Secret Invasion, Marvel is shifting gears and planning to make TV shows in a more traditional way.
“We’re trying to marry the Marvel culture with the traditional television culture,” says Brad Winderbaum, Marvel’s head of streaming, television and animation. “It comes down to, ‘How can we tell stories in television that honor what’s so great about the source material?’”
Trouble With ‘Daredevil’
The latest Marvel Television series to run into trouble was the Daredevil reboot Daredevil: Born Again.
Trying to relaunch the popular Netflix series within the confines of the MCU provided both challenges and opportunities.
While Daredevil’s run on Netflix was lauded for its gritty tone, action, and violence, Daredevil: Born Again writers reportedly created a legal procedural that didn’t even feature Cox in his iconic costume until the fourth episode.
Marvel’s decision to go back to the drawing board on Daredevil: Born Again not only spoke to the troubled production of that show but also the chaos behind the scenes of many of Marvel’s streaming series.
Writers Have Limited Power
The aforementioned Moon Knight, for example, saw show creator and writer Jeremy Slater quit, and director Mohamed Diab took over.
Jessica Gao, meanwhile, developed and wrote She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, but she was cast aside when director Kat Coiro came on board.
Gao was eventually brought back to oversee postproduction (a role typically filled by showrunners), but very few headwriters have had that kind of power.
“TV is a writer-driven medium,” says one insider familiar with the Marvel process. “Marvel is a Marvel-driven medium.”
The ‘Secret Invasion’ Disaster
Marvel’s TV production chaos came to a head with Secret Invasion. With the studio overtaxed due to the production ramp-up during the COVID-19 pandemic, Marvel turned to outside executives as opposed to internally promoted creatives.
The project was initially under the purview of Mr. Robot writer Kyle Bradstreet, who had been working on the scripts for about a year when he was fired by Marvel.
Brian Tucker (Broken City) was then brought in as the show’s new writer alongside directors Thomas Bezcha and Ali Selim.
In the summer of 2022, however, conflict broke out between the show’s head creatives during Secret Invasion’s preproduction in London.
Marvel dispatched Jonathan Schwartz to get production back on track, and by early September, a substantial portion of the Secret Invasion team had been replaced. In addition to new line producers, unit production managers, and assistant directors, Bezucha also left the show, nominally due to scheduling conflicts.
The Marvel executive who oversaw Secret Invasion, Chris Gary, was reassigned and is now expected to leave the studio.
Changing How Shows Are Created
Going forward, Marvel plans on making real changes to how it makes TV. Gao’s postproduction work on She-Hulk demonstrated to Marvel how important it is to have a creative oversee the entire process of a show’s creation.
“It’s a term we’ve not only grown comfortable with but also learned to embrace,” says Winderbaum of showrunners.
The studio also plans on having full-time television executives, instead of execs who have their feet in both television and film.
Serialized Series Are Coming
Perhaps even more importantly, Marvel is also revamping its development process.
Showrunners will now write pilots and show Bibles. The days of filming an entire series and then looking back at what worked and what didn’t in post-production are over.
Additionally, Marvel plans on leaning into the idea of multiseason serialized TV and away from the limited-series format that has defined it thus far. The studio wants to create shows that allow its characters time to develop.
A new era of Marvel television is coming, and hopefully, the studio can get things back on track.
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