Kevin Feige explains why WandaVision, Marvel Studios’ first series, couldn’t be a simple movie – and why it could only be made for television. When Bob Iger, then CEO of Disney, contacted Feige in 2018 to develop and expand the Marvel movie universe at Disney+, the company wanted to create a franchise that is unique in the world. After Avengers: Ending the game and concluding the Infinity saga that began in 2008 with Iron Man, Feige will begin development on the studio’s first television projects that will be directly linked to MCU feature films.
Marvel’s first foray into the world of television will be WandaVision, which combines decades of classic sitcoms to unravel a mystery surrounding Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and The Vision, somehow resurrected (Paul Bettany).
Wanda and Vision are great comic book characters that we’ve only scratched the surface of in movies, played by such impressive actors, and we’ve only scratched the surface of what they can do. Focusing on the actors who play these characters was the main reason we wanted to do WandaVision, Feige told Variety. It’s mostly because I spent a lot of time in front of the television as a kid, watching reruns of various sitcoms. And when Nick in Nite came along, I’m old enough to remember that Nick in Nite was a new and unique thing…. I watched a lot and really became psychologically attached to many of these fake TV characters.
Coward’s love of cinema would have made it to the 23rd. MCU’s film is inspired and influenced, but the studio has yet to find a way to incorporate Feige’s appreciation for classic sitcoms like The Dick Van Dyke Show and Bewitched. And then Disney+ came in.
What would make me feel better after school [and] late at night are these TV shows. It was an aspect of my childhood and what for better or worse made me the person I am today. We could never really use it, Feige said. My love of all kinds of films and genre films is definitely reflected in the 23 films you’ve already seen us do at Marvel Studios, but that aspect of my background hasn’t even come into play so we can necessarily do something with it.
Parallel to the development of Disney+, it was Marvel Comics’ famous miniseries The Vision – featuring the titular Synthesoid at the head of a family of androids in the suburbs of Leave It To Beaver – that helped birth WandaVision.
That’s what I said: Let’s see how we can bring these two things together and make what is now our first Disney+ series a real movie, Feige said. It’s not just a Disney+ feature film. We’re going to do those kinds of programs, but for what is now our first, it would be great to do something that can only be done for television.
Featuring Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany, Kathryn Hahn, Teyona Parris, Kat Dennings and Randall Park, new episodes of Marvel’s WandaVision premiere Friday on Disney+.
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