by Nathaniel R
Disney, the corporation that will one day have a complete monopoly of the entertainment business, made lots of Disney+ announcements this week. Gizmodo has the details on how much their streaming service will be like Netflix. If you haven't been playing along they've announced at least eight scripted episodic streaming series thus far though we don't really know how far these are from being realities but for the first one...
- The Mandalorian -- a Star Wars universe series starring Pedro Pascal which will be the first series launched on the streaming channel. It'll be available on the day Disney+ opens for business: November 12th, 2019
- Untitled Love, Simon Series - A series based on the sequel to the book that inspired the movie Love Simon about a gay teenager and his high school friends.
- Untitled Cassian Andors Series -- another Star Wars universe series, this one a prequel as it will star Diego Luna reprising his role from Rogue One in which of course the heroes actually died.
- WandaVision - an Avengers spinoff series starring Elizabeth Olsen & Paul Bettany (we guess that means they're both getting resurrected in Endgame). We assume this will be the second series launched since it was announced a bit further back in time.
- The Falcon and the Winter Soldier - another Avengers spinoff series starring Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan, so they're both getting resurrected in Endgame, too. This news surprises a bit because we half suspected that either Mackie or Stan would assume the Captain America mantle within the MCU once Chris Evans takes his final bow by way of Steve Rogers biting the dust (again just an assumption that the super soldier will die in Endgame). But it's hard to picture Marvel really letting characters appear on both the big screen and the small screen simultaneously.
- Loki - Tom Hiddleston will reprise his role to explore Loki's past
- What If? - If you grew up with comic books in the 1970s or 1980s you might know this title. It was an anthology series in which Marvel used to let their artists and writers go wild with scenarios that couldn't happen within the canonical existing universe. This will be an animated series using their ever expanding gallery of heroes and villains. The first episode will be about Peggy Carter becoming the super soldier instead of Steve Rogers back in the 1940s.
- The Sandlot - This series will be based on the 1993 comedy about young kids on a baseball team.
The Sandlot (1993)
So a lot of boy content. Only one show with a female lead and she shares the leading duties? Boo!
Netflix cancelled all their Marvel superhero series (no doubt in anticipation of their upcoming competition) but strangely there has not been any indication of whether contractually these series can just shift over and start up again or whether they'd have to reboot or whether Marvel even wants to. At the very least it seems a shame to lose Jessica Jones and Daredevil as they were both strong series with terrific lead hero casting.