Marvel said they were scaling back on a glut of Disney Plus MCU shows after it believes it may have flooded the market with too many, and now three shows that were in development, albeit not officially greenlit, are now paused.
Those include Nova, Strange Academy and one I didn’t even know was being considered, Terror Inc. It also seems likely that at least some of these were chosen due to potential cost, as Marvel seems to be considering more street-level content than giant blockbuster type productions for the future, or at least things on the cheaper side more generally given the recent success of the cheapest MCU show to date, Agatha All Along.
It’s easy to imagine that Nova, about a space-faring intergalactic peacekeeper in the vein of DC’s Green Lantern, would be hugely expensive given its concept and no doubt extreme use of VFX to render its intergalactic locations. And while Nova is certainly at least somewhat of a known quantity in Marvel, is he worth a $200+ million show?
Similarly, Strange Academy may be a solid comic run, but a massively magic-focused series with again, no doubt a lot of VFX used to bring that to life, would also have a big price tag. While Agatha All Along was certainly magic-focused, it didn’t overuse those powers and when it had them, they weren’t exactly blockbuster-level.
As for Terror Inc, about an entity that absorbs the powers of others through dismembered limbs, I don’t know about cost, but that was likely to be the most obscure character that Marvel has ever focused on, so maybe they realized it wasn’t worth going down that road at all.
It feels like Marvel is pivoting toward essentially bringing back the entirety of Netflix’s old street-level offerings, beginning with Daredevil: Born Again. Well, technically beginning with Echo, a cheap series that had a Daredevil cameo and a rather significant role for Wilson Fisk.
Born Again already has two full seasons greenlit with the second in production as the first is about to air. There has been a lot of talk about really all of the Netflix-era characters coming back in some form or another. Frank Castle appearing in Daredevil certainly indicates he may return to having a series. Brad Winderbaum, head of Marvel TV, has spoken repeatedly about other characters from The Defenders returning, saying especially that he’d like Jessica Jones back. Fans are hoping Marvel might make a Heroes for Hire show starring Luke Cage and Iron Fist.
It’s not like Marvel has hit pause on all its seemingly expensive shows. We have Ironheart, Wonder Man and Vision Quest still coming up that are certainly not street level in the same sense as The Defenders, but it does seem like those shows were already decently far along before Marvel expressed the desire to scale back. We’ll see if all of them make it to the finish line, but yes, I expect all the Defenders to return at some point.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
