RUMOR: Is Marvel Scrapping Wonder Man and Other Shows?
Is Marvel cutting more of its Disney+ fat? Joanna Robinson seems to think so, and she’s heard it from a few sources. The co-author of MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios (with Dave Gonzales and Gavin Edwards) appeared on the podcast The Watch (where she also talked about Marvel’s plans to use Avengers: Secret Wars to reboot the MCU), where she said (via Bounding Into Comics) that Marvel is “trashing the Wonder Man project,” one of its developing streaming shows. But it won’t stop at Wonder Man if Robinson’s admittedly “dubious sources” are to be believed, as she continued by saying that “a lot of stuff… is going to go in the can.” Wonder Man was being produced and partly directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, the director of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, with Yahya Adebul-Mateen II (Black Manta in the Aquaman movies) starring as Wonder Man and Ben Kingsley and Ed Harris in supporting roles.
One of the others has to be Ironheart, right? I know it’s either all or mostly filmed at this point, but if they suddenly care about their brand, they must know that this one will damage it probably worse than anything. Regardless, this is good news if it ends up being true, if only because it means I won’t have to sit through them to review them. Wonder Man was going to be a Hollywood satire, which is potentially cool, but I don’t think for a second Marvel can pull this off with any kind of style or humor. For example, the lead character is being race-swapped; is there a chance in hell they make a joke about that? I doubt it, which would immediately show the satire’s lack of teeth. And I’m happy Ed Harris, who is a fantastic actor, won’t be wasted on something that’s almost certainly going to be terrible. As for what else they could be dropping, aside from the obvious Ironheart, I’m guessing all the stuff they haven’t filmed, like Vision Quest, Marvel Zombies, and Nova. The possible exception is Spider-Man: Freshman Year, which has a much better chance of catching on than any of the others. Echo and Agatha: Darkhold Diaries (or whatever it’s called when it airs) are completed, and I think they’ll definitely be released, and X-Men ‘97 has too much potential just because of its built-in nostalgia. But I’m glad they’re getting rid of some of these if the report is accurate; given the awful quality of their Disney+ shows, less is definitely more (and unless they get a lot better, none may be best of all).
