Disney CEO Teases ‘The Mandalorian’ Spin-Offs & More Marvel TV Shows
Disney CEO Bob Iger recently held an earnings call discussing the state of the Disney+ streaming service, and a few tantalising little bits of information came out which should please Marvel and Star Wars fans.
The first bit of info was some idea of the expected premiere dates for the first three Marvel shows, along with ‘The Mandalorian’ Season 2. On the Marvel side, ‘The Falcon & The Winter Soldier’ will land in August 2020, followed by ‘WandaVision’ in December 2020, and ‘Loki’ at some point in 2021. In between those, ‘The Mandalorian’ Season 2 will premiere in October 2020.
Sticking with ‘The Mandalorian’, he went on to say that the company is exploring “the possibility of infusing [The Mandalorian] with more characters and taking those characters in their own direction in terms of series.” He goes on to comment that the Star Wars franchise is taking “a bit of a hiatus in terms of theatrical releases” so the company’s “priority in the next few years is television.”
We do know they already have two more Star Wars series in development right now. One based around ‘Rogue One’s Cassian Andor played by Diego Luna, and the ‘Obi-Wan’ series, which is still coming, but production has been delayed slightly whilst they make some script changes. However, following the massive critical success of ‘The Mandalorian’, Iger seems to be implying there could be more spin-offs incoming which tie-in to characters from that show. Whilst I don’t see Baby Yoda landing his own series (as adorable as he is), I could see a show based around Rebel Shock Trooper Cara Dune or something around the history of Ugnaught “I have spoken” Kuiil. We’ll have to see what they come up with.
Over on the Marvel side, Iger let slip that there are “seven other Marvel series in various stages of development or preproduction”, alongside the three I mentioned above. We know some of these have already been announced – The animated series ‘What If?’, plus live-action series ‘Moon Knight’, ‘She-Hulk’, ‘Hawkeye’, and ‘Ms. Marvel’... But that still leaves two shows unaccounted for…
We have no idea what these two shows could be at this point, but they are not exactly short on characters to pick from. Along with all the Avengers and other Marvel characters, the studio does now have control of the various ‘X-Men’, but we suspect they will keep those for a big-screen release. I’m totally speculating here, but what about a ‘Fantastic Four’ tv show? After various attempts at making the superhero team work on the big screen (with mixed results), maybe a long-form tv approach could work better for them? Again, we’ll have to wait and see what they announce.
Disney+ launches in the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria, and Switzerland on Tuesday, 24th March 2020, and will cost £5.99/€6.99 monthly or £59.99/€69.99 annually. Additional Western Europe markets, including Belgium, the Nordics, and Portugal, will follow in Summer 2020.
