With Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings director Daniel Destin Cretton no longer attached to Avengers 5, he's been able to focus on Disney+'s upcoming Wonder Man series.
While the show has never been "officially" announced by Marvel Studios, we have a new update from Variety. In a piece addressing the decision to bring back the "Marvel Television" label to better differentiate big and small screen stories, the trade confirms that Wonder Man will fall under the "Marvel Spotlight" banner Echo debuted with in January.
That's meant for one-off, character-driven TV shows which can serve as standalone projects with fewer connections to the wider MCU. However, with Echo, that decision seems to have been made relatively last-minute seeing as it set the stage for Daredevil: Born Again.
"There was a lot of pressure post-'Avengers: Endgame' on the public to feel obligated to watch absolutely everything in order to watch anything," Brad Winderbaum, Marvel's head of streaming, television and animation, tells the site. "Part of the rebranding was a signal to the general audience that we’re creating a lot of options, and you can follow your tastes within this brand."
"Some will be more comedic, some will be more dramatic, some will be animated, some will be live-action. Marvel is more than just one thing - it is actually many different genres that just happened to coexist in a single narrative. The characters still live and breathe in the same universe, but the interconnectivity is not so rigid that you need to watch Project A to understand Project B."
He adds, "We were already, as of two years ago, adapting our process from being, you know, fill the service as fast as possible no matter what, to a more considered approach. I really like the idea of two shows a year, especially because we are developing more than we make."
"We used to treat the shows like the features where we’re gonna make a show and that’s it, we’re going to hit a release date, hell or high water. Well, it’s hard to do for a two hour feature, it’s even harder to do for, six, seven, eight, nine hours. So now we have a more traditional approach."
Wonder Man has enlisted Andrew Guest as Head Writer with Cretton helming the first two episodes. There had been rumours about the show being scrapped during last year's strikes; however, like Daredevil: Born Again, we believe the show has instead been creatively overhauled and improved.
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II will play Wonder Man, with Sir Ben Kingsley set to reprise his Iron Man 3 and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings role as Trevor Slattery. Last April, Demetrius Grosse was confirmed as The Grim Reaper, while quite a few A-Listers - including Ed Harris, Bob Odenkirk, and Courtney Cox - are rumoured to appear.
Wonder Man made his Marvel Comics debut in the pages of Avengers #9 in 1964. Initially a villain, he was later retconned and became a hero (and an Avenger) in the 1970s. The Grim Reaper is his brother, and his brainwaves were used by Ultron as a basis for The Vision; later, he joined the West Coast Avengers and became a Hollywood star.
Wonder Man doesn't currently have a confirmed premiere date.