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Credit: Inside the MagicThe Walt Disney Company is currently slowing down production on Marvel Cinematic Universe projects, but there’s one thing it is definitely going to do: make the MCU dark, gory, and violent.
It is probably fair to say that Marvel Studios has hit some pretty big bumps in the road lately. Since the release of the titanic Avengers: Endgame (2019), there has been the perception that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has struggled to find its way forward. Movies like Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania (2023) and The Marvels (2023) bombed at the box office, Disney+ series like She-Hulk: Attorney at Law and Secret Invasion were greeted with mild indifference at best, and even fish in a barrel like a Daredevil revival seems to be having trouble getting made.
Related: ‘The Marvels’ Star Will Lead ‘Marvel Zombies’
In response, Disney CEO Bob Iger has announced that the company will be massively scaling back on new Marvel Studios releases in order to focus on “quality over quantity.” According to a key figure at the studio, it appears that quality means “hardcore” and that beloved characters will “die rough.”
In a recent interview with Marvel.com, director Bryan Andrews revealed that the upcoming Marvel Zombies series is going to be one of the darkest and grisliest things ever produced for the MCU or Disney+. While Disney has always been known for its family-friendly image, it has already announced that Marvel Zombies would be TV-MA (a television rating broadly equivalent to a rated R film), and it really sounds like the studio is ready to push viewers out of their comfort zone.
Andrews said of Marvel Zombies, “it’s going to be pretty awesome. I mean it’s TV-MA, it’s hardcore. People die. And they die rough.” Given that the subject matter is the gruesomely hungry undead, that should probably not be all that surprising.
Related: The Best Marvel ‘What If…?’ Stories That Should Be In Season 3
The director continued, “But, you know, we might prop you up with some laughs and some humor and some good times, and then and then we take stuff away. So, it’s pretty brutal. There’s huge action. There’s great emotion. There’s drama. There’s all of it.”
At the very least, it sounds like Disney and Marvel Studios are letting a lot ride on the first Disney+ TV-MA series. They should have some reason to do so, considering that Marvel Zombies is a spinoff of What If…? (which Andrews co-directed 18 episodes of), one of the few bright spots of the franchise in the last year. Hopefully, viewers will be willing to go along with all the blood and guts right next to Mickey Mouse.
Do you think Disney+ should stream TV-MA shows? Tell us in the comments below!