For just a moment at the start of the 2020s, it looked like Marvel Studios was going to dominate the pop culture zeitgeist without challenge like it did in the 2010s. In December 2020, Marvel Studios heralded the arrival of its first Disney+ show (WandaVision) by announcing a slew of further small-screen programming at a Disney quarterly earnings report. The assumption was that all the Marvel/Disney+ shows would be instantly lucrative enough to inspire demand for many more shows, much like the movies kept generating demand for more and more feature films. A year later, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings director Destin Daniel Cretton signed on to a long-term deal with various Disney companies (including Marvel Studios). This deal would eventually encompass Wonder Man, a Marvel show set in Hollywood.
Based on a supervillain-turned-superhero first introduced back in 1964, Wonder Man has appeared in various Marvel media over the years after becoming a staple of the comics. His ubiquity even included nearly appearing in a cameo via movie posters in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, with the role inhabited by Nathan Fillion. This figure seemed like a reasonable choice to headline a Disney+ program and it was equally easy to assume Cretton could lend unprecedented layers of depth to this guy the same way he did with Shang-Chi. However, years later, the Wonder Man show appears to be in a state of limbo, and it’s unclear if it will ever see the light of day. Wonder Man once emerged as a reflection of Marvel being uber-confident, but now its potential demise reflects how messy things have gotten for the studio in just a few short years.
There Were a Lot of Announcements About ‘Wonder Man’ At First
In June 2022, it was officially confirmed that Wonder Man would be Cretton‘s big foray into Disney+ Marvel Studios programming, He would be joined by TV veteran Andrew Guest (most famous for his work on Brooklyn Nine-Nine) in bringing the project to life. It’s important to remember where this announcement happened in the timeline of the MCU. Six months earlier, Spider-Man: No Way Home became the third-biggest movie in history at the domestic box office while one month earlier, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness secured the largest North American box office debut in history. Meanwhile, Loki had become a huge viewership hit the previous summer, while Moon Knight had just scored solid viewership numbers too. Everything looked right in the world of Marvel, which meant full steam ahead on a bevy of new projects like Wonder Man.
Further developments began to trickle out about the show, including Yahya Abdul-Mateen II being cast as Wonder Man and Ben Kingsley reprising his MCU role of Trevor Slattery. The latter production made sense since Wonder Man/Simon Williams worked as an actor (hence the Hollywood setting of the show), so why wouldn’t he rub shoulders with an “ac-tor” like Slattery? By the spring of 2023, the slate of directors for the show had been selected (Stella Meghie would be among those helming installments of the program) and Wonder Man was set for a Spring 2023 start date.
Those plans ended up coming to fruition, as Cretton himself confirmed at the start of April 2023 that Wonder Man had begun shooting. As the show began getting in front of cameras, a report emerged claiming that Ed Harris would play one of the lead roles of the program, Wonder Man’s agent Neal Saroyan, though Marvel Studios never confirmed this casting. That wasn’t the only uncertain thing looming over this production. In just a year since Wonder Man had been properly announced, the MCU was already going through great upheavals. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania became the rare MCU box office misfire in February 2023, a major problem since it teed up years of new movies and TV shows. Meanwhile, other 2022 Disney+ programs like She-Hulk: Attorney at Law just didn’t deliver the kind of massive viewership numbers that Disney executives would’ve been hoping for.
Marvel Studios was producing more projects than ever, but audiences weren’t responding as enthusiastically to each new film and TV show as they had with the various movies released in the 2010s. The massive success of No Way Home was already feeling like a distant memory as Wonder Man began shooting. However, a pair of further challenges were about to capsize Wonder Man. Strikes from the Writer’s Guild of America and SAG/AFTRA related to demands for livable wages from corporations were now on the horizon, with the WGA going on strike at the start of May 2023.
How Did ‘Wonder Man’ End Up in Limbo?
Initially, the plan for Marvel‘s TV shows had been to keep shooting during the WGA strike and get as much footage in the can before a potential actors’ strike in July. However, at the end of May 2023, filming for Wonder Man was shut down entirely, partially in response to picketers protesting at sights where the show was shooting. When SAG/AFTRA went on strike in July 2023, it was official: Wonder Man was going on a shelf for months and months. That same summer, Secret Invasion premiered to disastrous reviews. This Disney+ program just inspired further discussion and critique over both Marvel’s TV exploits and the idea that the studio was simply doing too much. This status quo for Marvel Cinematic Universe projects could not continue on.
In the final months of 2023, Marvel Studios went through one of the most seismic upheavals in the history of the company. An October 2023 Hollywood Reporter piece explored how Marvel Studios was abandoning its previous default approach to making television and would now be hiring showrunners to creatively steer its shows. The only mention of Wonder Man in this article was a mention of it being a more grounded show in the vein of the then-upcoming Echo program. A few days later, though, author Joanna Robinson claimed to have heard reports that Marvel Studios would be abandoning the show. In November 2023, Cretton left his job as the director of Avengers: The Kang Dynasty but was confirmed to still be a part of Wonder Man, which Deadline reported would be made under the Marvel Spotlight banner.
While there were claims that the series would resume shooting immediately after Thanksgiving 2023 in the wake of the SAG-AFTRA strike getting resolved, there have been no further updates since then on the status of Wonder Man. With Marvel Studios and the entire American television industry slimming down their output considerably, it seems more and more doubtful every day that Wonder Man will return in front of the cameras. After all, the show barely shot for a month before the strikes caused production to cease, there wouldn’t be a ton of footage lost if it was shelved. Plus, Marvel Studios is spending a lot of energy just trying to get major TV shows like Daredevil: Born Again out in a coherent fashion. It’s doubtful they’re also eager to go in and spend tons of time and effort on Wonder Man.
In December 2020, Marvel Studios hadn’t released anything new to the public since Spider-Man: Far From Home in July 2019. It seemed inevitable that the company’s Phase Four movie and TV exploits would be greeted with the same enthusiasm that its preceding decade of entertainment had received. Instead, the following three years were full of stumbles stemming from ramping up production so severely and engaging in a medium of storytelling where Marvel Studios had minimal prior experience. This proposed TV show focused on Wonder Man has been caught up in all that mayhem. Its initial creation reflected the tail end of Marvel’s confidence at the start of the 2020s, but its limbo status at the start of 2024 encapsulates the shaky ground Marvel Studios currently stands on.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is available to stream on Disney+ in the U.S.
via Collider