Don’t worry about the headline to this article: there are still a ton of MCU movies in our future. Even so, it seems that those movies are actually secondary in Marvel’s bug upcoming plans, as much of the focus right now is actually on the rather high number of Marvel shows slated for Disney+, of which the first will be WandaVision coming next month. Marvel Boss Kevin Feige has spoken about the future of Marvel and its big plans for streaming.
Feige stated that he considered streaming to be “the future” of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. [It’s] where consumers want to watch things,” he said. “And hopefully they’ll want to watch our long-form narrative series. An experience like WandaVision is something you can’t get in a movie. You go to movies for things you can’t get on streaming, and you go to streaming for things you can’t get in a theater. And of course, everything in a theater goes to streaming eventually.”
Feige also explained that MCU shows will provide the opportunity to explore many of its characters in far greater depth than even the movies allow. Naturally, this will start with the titular main characters of WandaVision, who didn’t play massive roles in any of the MCU movies.
“My team and I were wondering internally about where to go from here, and what would be the next step that was equally challenging and unexpected,” he said. “Elizabeth [Olsen] and Paul [Bettany] were these amazing actors–who had done amazing things in four movies–but never had a chance to dominate the narrative because there was so much else going on. It felt fun to finally give them a platform to showcase their astounding talent.”
Along with all of this, Feige also provided a slight bit of insight into another soon to be Disney+ show by Marvel, She-Hulk. The series will star Orphan Black’s Tatiana Maslany as Jennifer Walters, a lawyer who also happens to be Bruce Banner’s cousin. Feige described the show as a “half-hour legal comedy,” and stated it would be something Marvel had “never done before.” We’re a little curious as to where the superhero part of that actually fits in.
Last week, Marvel also announced a new Disney+ show called Marvel Studios: Legends. Unlike most of the other upcoming shows, this one isn’t a new narrative series, but a “greatest hits” package that will be focusing on specific individual heroes from the MCU. The first two episodes arrive in January and will feature WandaVision, since it will be around the time their own narrative show comes out. There are many other narrative shows coming up besides that though, covering a wide variety of heroes like Falcon and The Winter Soldier, Hawkeye, and many other favorites. Naturally, we can expect there to be some new heroes to get some insight on as well. One way or another, the next few years are certain to be a pretty exciting time for Marvel fans.