WHIH Newsfront was a short-lived MCU tie-in that expanded on the events of Avengers: Age of Ultron, Ant-Man, and Captain America: Civil War. Leslie Bibb reprised her role as Christine Everhart from the Iron Man franchise, while Al Madrigal played political correspondent Will Adams.
Among the many other familiar faces who showed up were Scott Lang, Darren Cross, and President Ellis, and a lot of fans were disappointed when the YouTube videos - created by Marvel Studios in partnership with Google to promote their movies - came to a relatively abrupt end in 2016.
Jeremy Adams was among those who wrote episodes of WHIH Newsfront, and when we had him on the phone this week to discuss DC Showcase - Blue Beetle, we asked about that experience.
"You always hope that they’ll keep letting you do it," he said when we asked if it was disappointing to see the series end. "I was working for a marketing company. Literally. I’m not even kidding you. They hired me and my title was ‘Marvel Specialist.’ That was it! [Laughs] No one else knew about this stuff at the time. The MCU was still fairly young, and to be able to do something in that space in live-action was amazing. As you can guess with marketing, there are a lot more hurdles to jump over."
"I would love to revisit something like that because I love ancillary stuff. I love the stuff in the background. Dwayne McDuffie, who was a genius, his Damage Control comic showing people cleaning up was amazing. Wouldn’t it be hilarious to have The Daily Bugle show on every night and it was just in-world characters doing the news? [Laughs]," Adams continued, pitching a series we'd very much like to see. "That’s meta. We’re moving into that sort of thing, but I was beyond excited at the time and it was a crazy thing because I was still at a very early point in my career."
"‘Oh, you want to do this thing in live-action that’s tied to the MCU?’ I’m like, ‘What? I don’t even understand what you’re saying right now!’ [Laughs] Not only was it cool on the face of it, but William Sadler was in it briefly. Die Hard 2! He’s Death in Bill & Ted. For someone starting out, it was great."
Sony Pictures actually took a crack at a Daily Bugle series to promote Spider-Man: No Way Home. Shared on TikTok, they showed Betty Brant as an intern working for J. Jonah Jameson, but mostly recycled the same footage and didn't quite have the same impact as these WHIH Newsfront shorts.
There's always a chance Marvel Studios will revisit this concept, and the news station has since been referenced in the MCU so we're assuming they're considered canon. Adams clearly had an awesome time working on them, anyway, and we'll be sharing our full Blue Beetle interview with you tomorrow.
DC Showcase: Constantine - The House of Mystery arrives on Digital & Blu-ray on May 3.