Echo Director Explains How the Series Became Marvel’s First “TV-MA” Release
With the arrival of Echo on Disney+, Marvel Studios not only premiered its first release under the new Marvel Spotlight banner, but also the first streaming series by the studio to get a TV-MA rating.
As Marvel shifted its streaming series toward more traditional television shows, Echo was explicitly written so that audiences could follow the series without having to keep up with the broader MCU.
Photo: The Direct
According to Echo co-director and executive producer Sydney Freeland, the show’s team did not set out to make a TV-MA sheries, but instead wanted to “push the envelope”.
Photo: Marvel
“We did not set out to make a TV-MA show, but we did know it was going to be grounded. It was going to be gritty. It was going to be a little more visceral and street level, and the question was just, how [far] can we go? For myself, I’m down to go as far as [I can]. I want to push the envelope as far as Marvel will let me,” Freeland said.
Doing What The Story Dictated
In the end, with the studio’s blessing, Freeland was able to tell the story that needed to be told.
Photo: Marvel
“In this case, Marvel let us go quite far with it. But really, it all comes down to the story. If you look at this character, she’s a high-ranking lieutenant in Kingpin’s army, and she’s the boots on the ground. It’s not the people at the top who do the dirty work. It’s the people who have boots on the ground.”
Knowing that they wanted Maya to be like family to Kingpin, Freeland and her team needed to show why the ruthless mobster would identify with her.
Photo: Marvel
“If Maya is going to come into Kingpin’s fold to the point where she’s being taken in as his niece, almost like an unhealthy father-daughter dynamic, she has to do something that’s going to put her on his radar. All roads lead to that,” Feeland explained.
“You have to have that. So with that, then the conversation is becomes ‘Well, okay, so how can we do this? How can we show this?’ She’s got to do some dirty work, you know? She has to show a certain degree of ruthlessness that Kingpin would identify with and gravitate towards. So all those things just sort of contribute to creating something that was more graphic,” she concluded.
A New Era For Marvel
In the end, the team behind Echo created something that was widely different than anything Marvel had released before.
Photo: Marvel
Whether or not the show is a success remains to be seen. What is clear, however, is that Marvel is entering a new era in streaming.
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