Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Is Marvel's Television MCU Going To Merge?

Like I said in yesterday's post, a lot of interesting news was learned this past weekend at New York Comic Con.  It's quickly beginning to surpass San Diego as the premier Con to go to, especially because Disney's Marvel division doesn't seem to shy away from it like they do San Diego.  I told you yesterday about Sigourney Weaver joining The Defenders project, but as interesting and exciting as that was, it's not the only news that got people talking when it comes to the television side of the MCU.  During one of the panels, there was the expected question from one particular fan asking if we'd ever get to see a Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Netflix shows doing a cross over.  Jeph Loeb, the head of Marvel TV answered, "Fair question.  The answer is: stay tuned."  In a roundtable discussion with Screen Rant, Loeb elaborated a little bit on his answer:

"I get in trouble every single time I say this, which is #ItsAllConnected. But trust me when I say #ItsAllConnected and that’s about all I can say on it at this time."

He then went on to explain the difficulties in bringing the two sides of the Marvel television universe together:

"One of the things that’s a challenge and it’s unlike the movie studio because the movie studio is making all of the movies for one place and that’s the theaters. The theater owners don’t get to say well we don’t want Spider-Man to be in Captain America — in that particular case Sony and Marvel had to work that out so that could happen. But in the case of what we do, we have networks to consider and that’s a conversation [for] ABC and Netflix — and now we have shows at Hulu and Freeform and FX [as well]. So it just becomes a question of once it starts, what have we unleashed? But it’s certainly a topic of conversation."

I think one of the biggest hurdles that the two companies will have to overcome is their competing formats.  ABC, which airs Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., airs their programs on a week to week basis, while Netflix releases the entire season all at once so viewers can binge-watch.  This may be the hardest thing to overcome, since I don't see one company allowing the other to use their properties without having the favor returned in kind.  One or the other format may mess up the flow of the plot of the other's, but it does sound like something that they are pursuing.  If I hear anything else about this cross-over happening, I'll be sure to let you know.

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