Brad Winderbaum, Head of Streaming, Television, and Animation at Marvel Studios, revealed how the company’s animation division came to be during the Marvel Studios Animation panel at San Diego Comic-Con.
Winderbaum revealed that Kevin Feige and his ideas for What If…? led to the entire animation department because they realized they wanted to make more.
And they are sure making more.
Just to put in perspective this fledgling animation department has already done What If…? season one. The series that literally created this department, and two more seasons of that series are on the way. What If…? also produced a spinoff of its own.
Marvel Studios Animation is doing Marvel Zombies which is an offshoot from a season one episode of What If…? This was clearly one of the ideas that Feige wanted to make more of. Marvel Zombies also expands the scope of Marvel Studios Animation as the series will be TV-MA. The series will feature certain Marvel heroes becoming zombies, and a group of unscathed heroes (notably from Phase 4 Marvel Studios projects) battling them while dealing with other threats in a post-apocalyptic world.
Marvel Studios Animation’s ambitions go even farther as they are going to resurrect and continue the beloved X-Men: The Animated Series with X-Men ’97. The animation department will be responsible for the first X-Men-related project under the Marvel Studios banner since Disney’s completion of 21st Century Fox. It also seems Marvel Studios Animation has confidence in the revived series as season two has already been confirmed.
Spider-Man: Freshman Year is another ambitious project that Marvel Studios Animation clearly has faith in. The series was originally going to tie in heavily with the main MCU timeline we know and take place before Tom Holland’s Peter Parker/Spider-Man appeared in Captain America: Civil War. Now it seems that the series is going with a more multiverse approach as Peter Parker will be interacting with Nico Minoru of The Runaways, Amadeus Cho, Daredevil, Harry and Norman Osborn, Doctor Strange, and many others. Now imagine what they are holding back if they are willing to reveal all that? The animation is very comic-book inspired and is reminiscent of the work of Steve Ditko. The series already has season two in the works perfectly titled Spider-Man: Sophomore Year.
These projects take place within the next two years. So, who knows what we will even be getting by 2025 and beyond. Yet for Marvel Studios Animation there are plenty of ideas that could happen. Heck, What If…? itself will likely spawn a couple more spinoff series at least.
The future of Marvel Studios Animation is bright, and it’s incredible to think that the entire department was started on a what-if and the desire to make more animated series.
Zach Perilstein is the Editor-in-Chief of the Boardwalk Times
