[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”28007″ img_size=”900×500″ alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]Marvel TV is small compared to the film Marvel Cinematic Universe, but not for long. Jeph Loeb, who is the chief of Marvel Television, has a lot in store, and he took the time to talk about everything (and almost anything) that had to do with upcoming projects. First of all, he declared:
“When we start thinking about our shows, it’s how do we do better than we did the last time. We will never be a factory. We don’t know how to be a factory. There is no Marvel prototype.”
Loeb had an interview with Deadline, who started off by asking a general question about what we can expect moving forward:
DEADLINE: So, S.H.I.E.L.D. is coming to an end after Season 7, several new shows are coming on Hulu, crossovers, Legion ending on FX and more. So, where is Marvel TV now and going forward?
LOEB: Well, the most exciting thing right now is finding the new corners. When we start talking about Marvel Television, we like to look at the different families.
DEADLINE: What are those clans?
LOEB: So the Marvel heroes are the ones that are most closely associated with the movies, so that would be S.H.I.E.L.D., and that would be Agent Carter. They came from the movies, our two leads were actually in the movies.
Then the next group is the Marvel Street-Level Heroes, or the Marvel Knights, as we sometimes call them here. So, if the Marvel heroes are here to save the universe, the Marvel Street-Level Heroes, the Marvel Knights, often they are just to save themselves, to save the neighborhood.
Some of those appeared on Netflix, but there are others that live in that category, which are still to come.
Then we took a look at the Marvel Universe that was upcoming and we knew that Tom Holland was going to be playing the role of Peter Parker in Spider-man, so the idea of YA, the idea of young heroes was something that got us very excited because it works really well on television.
Cloak & Dagger/Runaways Crossover
Deadline then moved into the Cloak & Dagger crossover with the Runaways. Sharing that everything is in fact connected!
DEADLINE: The much-rumored Cloak & Dagger and Runaways crossover has become official, is this going to be just a one-off even though the two outlets have shared corporate parenthood?
LOEB: This is something we’ve wanted to do since Season 1on both shows. We hope it’s the first of many. It’s one of the many benefits of having all our shows on Disney-based platforms. It is a shared universe. #itsallconnected!
Legion
Loeb then moved into Legion, which is wrapping its third and final season:
DEADLINE: What’s open information is that Legion wraps up its three-season run on FX tonight. The Noah Hawley helmed series was a very different type of show for Marvel in some people’s mind and very much indicative of your scope at the same time. I know you’ve talked about this a bit before, but looking back over the three seasons of Legion, what is your perspective on the series, Noah and maybe even more Legion down the line?
LOEB: It’s a remarkable show created and visualized by an extraordinary filmmaker. Noah carried this from the start — told us how he wanted the show to begin and how he wanted it to end — and we’ve respected that. Having FX as our partner made it very exciting as well from both a creative and marketing stand point.
As to the future, that world and those characters will always be there. It’s our hope that Noah will want to return to them is any capacity he thinks is worth telling. FX remains a huge priority for us because we can tell those unexpected stories there and John Landgraf is something of a visionary himself. They “get” us and we “get” them. We like all of that.
Disney+
Disney+ has a lot of great shows coming out, but Loeb reveals that shows like Loki and WandaVision are the responsibility of the movie studios.
DEADLINE: On the flip-side, under the same corporate umbrella, there’s going to be all these Disney+ shows, Scarlet Witch and Vision, Winter Soldier and Falcon, there’s a number of them, do you feel that there is a potential of too much Marvel?
LOEB: Well, first of all, I have to make something very clear, which is those are shows that are created and run and the responsibility of the motion picture studio. Secondly, Marvel Television will be doing shows with Disney+, we just haven’t announced what we’re going to do there.
DEADLINE: And when do you think we’re going to hear what Marvel TV’s Disney+ offerings are?
LOEB: When we’re ready.
Hulu and Netflix
In a later part of the article, Loeb talked about the upcoming shows on Hulu, the relationship with Hulu, and the fallout of Netflix:
LOEB: That they’re getting this brand that’s known throughout the world. It’s just a different kind of strategizing, which is what’s the best way that we can tell the world that Marvel adult animation is on Hulu, for example.
We were talking to them, and they started scratching because when you look at the success that they’ve had with Castle Rock and the world of terror. Something that really interested us and interested them, and we always knew that we were going to do something with Ghost Rider, we were just waiting for the right place to put it.
Then we started having the same conversation, which was there is in the comic book world the Spirit of Vengeance, and they are this sort of unusual group of characters, which involve Ghost Rider, which involve Helstrom, which involve Helstrom’s sister, Anna. We suddenly saw that there were three or four shows that we could put together that we now refer to as Adventure into Fear.
DEADLINE: Is that Marvel Horror under another name?
LOEB: No, it’s terror, because when you say horror, it means so many different things. There’s everything from Saw, which is the last thing that we want to do, gore-fest kind of thing to there’s a monster running around. What we love is the notion of how we can present a Marvel hero who was truly feared and truly believed that they were a monster, but that, as the stories go on, they realize, oh, I’m the hero of the story, I’m not the villain of the story. That’s not something we’ve ever done before. So we started with Ghost Rider, we went out and managed to get Gabriel Luna to come back and reproduce the role he played on S.H.I.E.L.D. Then we’re going to do Helstrom, and then there’s a couple more that we haven’t yet revealed to the world.
DEADLINE: It’s a new twist after the Netflix situation, which started on such a high and end almost as a case of death by a thousand streaming cuts, didn’t it?
LOEB: The hardest part was while the situation at Netflix of which I really can’t go into other than to say that we were blindsided and the things that were to come weren’t finished yet. We weren’t ready to announce that, so there was this space in between it, so it did look like maybe we were going to go out Then suddenly, we were arising again like the Phoenix.
DEADLINE: Which is a good narrative in hindsight, no?
LOEB: Yes but not while you’re in it. The truth of the matter is, we were on this thing where we said, oh wait, the bumper fell off the car, but the car’s still going, but we couldn’t discuss any of that. So, in the end, however history’s going to remember the story, all that’s important to us is that we had an opportunity to change television by putting together four heroes, who then joined together in a group, and people have talked about it like this is unprecedented.
Now, we’re going to do it again with the animated series, and then we’re going to do it again with the fear-based series. It’s now become, for us, our model. We would rather try to find ways of putting together a group of characters so that when a platform meets with us to talk about what we want to do, we’re trying to create a family on that platform.
For the full interview, head over to Deadline.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
A girl with too many fandoms to count.
