Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige discusses the future for “WandaVision,” the upcoming “Falcon and Winter Soldier” series and much more…
Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige promised ambitious plans for series on Disney+ and he’s absolutely delivered so far with “WandaVision,” which is the first show to debut on the streaming service.
As part of the annual Television Critics Association meetings, Feige revealed news about some of the plans he has in store for the Marvel series on Disney+ as well as the integration of those characters into the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe.
First up was “WandaVision,” which is headed into its final two episodes with the finale set to debut on March 5.
While ratings aren’t available for Disney+, the series has received rave reviews from critics and the show routinely trends across social media platforms, which is always a good sign for viewer engagement.
While “WandaVision” has been a huge success thus far, Feige said as of now there’s no plans to explore a second season of the show because Elizabeth Olsen will take her story from the show to a starring role in the upcoming sequel “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.”
“I’ve been at Marvel too long to say a definite ‘No’ to anything as far as a second season of ‘WandaVision,’” Feige teased. “Lizzie Olsen will go from ‘WandaVision’ to the ‘Doctor Strange’ film.”
Feige added that some of the Marvel series on Disney+ will be set up for a second season or beyond but others will serve as a standalone “event series” like the current plans for “WandaVision.”
“When we start with a movie, we hope there is a part two, we hope there is part three, but we aren’t factoring that into the part 1,” Feige said.
“Some of the shows that I mentioned that we are about to start filming, we are keeping in mind a structure that would lead into a season two or a season three in a more direct way compared to a show like WandaVision that goes into a feature [film.”
Feige added that the upcoming “Ms. Marvel” series that’s currently in production is another show that is expected to play out like an “event series” before then feeding into “Captain Marvel 2” starring Brie Larson.
The next show up on Disney+ will be “Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” which will reunite Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan after they appeared together in numerous films such as “Captain America: Winter Soldier” as well as both “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame.”
Feige confirmed that series will air as six episodes at roughly one hour a piece. “Falcon and Winter Soldier” will debut on March 19, two weeks after the conclusion of “WandaVision.”
According to the Marvel Studios president, he’s found that six hours of total programming is a good sweet spot for these series not only from a storytelling standpoint but also the cost to make them.
“Six hours is what we landed on as the best way to tell our story,” Feige said. “Six hours, whether it’s six episodes, or nine shorter episodes like ‘WandaVision.’ The shows aren’t inexpensive, so the per-episode cost is very high and to get that bar I was talking about.”
Following “Falcon and the Winter Soldier” will be the new series “Loki” starring Tom Hiddleston, which will debut on Disney+ on June 11.
One other subject that Feige touched on was the possible return of some of the shows that previously aired on Netflix as part of a Marvel television deal that was struck before he took over that wing of the company. Former Marvel Television head Jeph Loeb developed several series including “Daredevil,” “Jessica Jones,” “The Punisher” and “Luke Cage” that aired on the streaming service.
Once Disney+ was announced as a rival and competitor, Netflix wasted no time cancelling all of the Marvel series but the rights to those characters just recently returned to Marvel.
That had some fans clamoring for the resurrection of fan favorites like Charlie Cox as Daredevil or Krysten Ritter as Jessica Jones.
While Feige can’t promise that will ever happen, he did leave the door open to the possibility while also teasing that there have been plenty of online rumors about those characters that could be true.
“I’ll just say there are often rumors that are true and there are often rumors that are not true,” Feige said. “It was great fun having Clark Gregg (Agent Coulson) come back to the MCU in Captain Marvel … but everything else, we’ll just have to see.
“I think we probably could do it, I think a lot of that stuff comes back to us. There’s always rumors online about things reverting, sometimes that’s true, sometimes it’s not, but I’m not exactly sure of the exact contracts but perhaps someday.”
For now, Feige will keep his focus on the shows that are already in the works at Disney+ including the upcoming “She-Hulk” series starring Tatiana Maslany as well as the highly anticipated “Moon Knight” series that will star Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke.
