Marvel Television, headed by Jeph Loeb under the watchful eye of Marvel Entertainment Chairman Ike Perlmutter, closed its doors in 2019. At the time, Disney gave full control of the MCU to Kevin Feige, leading to Marvel Studios developing a slate of projects for Disney+.
While Marvel Television made a lot of missteps (we recently broke many of them down here), Marvel Studios quickly learned that developing TV shows wasn't as easy as they might have believed.
Approaching them like movies with "Head Writers" in place of showrunners (and pricey reshoots which fixed glaring issues in post-production) has forced them to go back to the drawing board. Following Daredevil: Born Again's creative overhaul, future small screen projects will be made like traditional TV shows.
They'll also be released under the returning "Marvel Television" banner, a move which shocked fans earlier this week. Talking to ComicBook.com, Marvel Studios Head of TV, Streaming, and Animation Brad Winderbaum explained the decision to resurrect the label.
"We want to make sure that Marvel stays an open door for people to come in and explore," he explained. "On the heels of Endgame, I think there was, maybe, a little bit of an obligation to watch absolutely everything in order to watch anything."
"As you know, as a comics fan, they're designed to just pop in, find something that you like, and use that to enter you into the universe, and then you can explore and weave around based on your own preferences. So part of the rebranding of Marvel Studios, Marvel Television, Marvel Animation, even Marvel Spotlight is to, I think, try to tell the audience, 'You can jump in anywhere.'"
"They're interconnected but they're not," Winderbaum continued. "You don't have to watch A to enjoy B. You can follow your bliss. You can follow your own preferences and find the thing you want within the tapestry of Marvel.'"
This makes sense as Marvel Studios arguably started asking too much of its casual audience by expecting them to watch WandaVision to understand the Doctor Strange sequel or by making Loki essential viewing to understand, well, the entire Multiverse Saga.
There will, however, be those disappointed over a potential lack of connectivity in the MCU moving forward.
"We’re slowly going to decrease volume and go to probably about two TV series a year instead of what had become four and reduce our film output from maybe four a year to two, or a maximum of three," Disney CEO Bob Iger said last week. "And we’re working hard on what that path is."
He added, "Overall, I feel great about the slate. It’s something that I’ve committed to spending more and more time on. The team is one that I have tremendous confidence in and the IP that we’re mining, including all the sequels that we’re doing, is second to none."
How do you feel about Marvel Television's return?