“Marvel Zombies” is the latest entry in The Multiverse Saga, and with that, some things that are coming to light include WHY the horror-centric story ended up a four-part miniseries instead of an animated movie, and Marvel Television‘s Brad Winderbaum also explains why they resisted recasting the T’Challa/Black Panther part after the shocking passing of beloved actor Chadwick Boseman.
The media-friendly Marvel exec had an interview with the “Who Let Them Out” podcast (via GamesRadar), revealing that while they may have wanted to turn “Marvel Zombies” into a feature, there were rights roadblocks if they wanted to include Spider-Man, and they are sort of relegated to shows/miniseries.
“Sony has other rights [alluding to being unable to make an animated feature]. We can use Spider-Man in a half-hour animation, which is why we’re able to make ‘Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man‘ as well. But that meant that we had to take our big epic story and break it into four chapters, which I actually think helped the storytelling.”
Another glaring issue on the Spidey front could have been that TV-MA rating for “Marvel Zombies” (a reminder that Tom Holland doesn’t voice Spidey; those duties fell on “Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man” voice actor Hudson Thames) and could explain why Holland wasn’t participating (his contract is connected to features). Sony Pictures has been quite protective of where and when Spidey is shown (also likely connected to their shared rights deal with Marvel Studios proper), to the point they did their darndest to keep him out of their Sonyverse films, focusing on a stream of rogues, that era supposedly ending with “Kraven The Hunter” and we don’t really envision Sony/Marvel being interested in adding Spidey to R-rated features either (despite fans calling for a Spider-Man and Deadpool crossover).
Also, speaking with ScreenRant, showrunner Bryan Andrews and Winderbaum opened up about the reasoning behind including T’Challa without having him speak was a way to avoid recasting the Black Panther role.
Andrews said of their choice not to recast T’Challa, “Yeah, for all the reasons you laid out, that’s why we chose to have Peter [Parker] narrate that moment. We didn’t have Chadwick. If we had Chadwick, it would’ve been completely different choices. If we had Chadwick, he would’ve had his own Star-Lord T’Challa spinoff show long before we did the zombie thing. But being able to revisit his character in that way, the way it plays out, it was another way to be with him in some strange way, even though there were no words. You know what I mean? It’s still Chadwick’s Black Panther, and that’s rad.”
“And we actually showed an early animatic to Ryan Coogler to get his notes, and he had some great ideas in that sequence that were really additive,” Winderbaum chimed in.
One of the neater elements of “Marvel Zombies” is that you’ll get Mahershala Ali’s (using his image, but Todd Williams voices him) Multiverse variant of Blade/Eric Brooks taking on the persona of Moon Knight (Oscar Isaac’s Marc Spector in Earth-616), as we’re still in the dark about the future of that stalled solo “Blade” film.
You can watch/listen to that chat between Winderbaum and the Who Let Them Out podcast below.
