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2021
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December
28
2020
The Marvel Cinematic Universe comes to television with WandaVision the new Disney+ series that places a super-powered Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany in the suburbs of classic sitcoms.
GALLERY LINKS
Studio Photoshoots > 2020 > Session 002
Magazine Scans > 2020 > Emmy Magazine
EMMY – When you wish upon a luxurious star, you just might land at Club 33 in Disneyland.
Tucked away above New Orleans Square and decorated with historic flourishes (the harpsichord at reception belonged to Walt Disney’s wife, Lillian), it’s a pricey, ultra-exclusive club for members and VIPS. On August 25, 2019, Marvel Studios president and chief creative officer Kevin Feige, joined by producer-director Matt Shakman, enjoyed lunch and swapped stories there with Dick Van Dyke and his wife, Arlene.
“It was unbelievable!” Feige recalls. “You sit down and don’t know what to say because you’re so starstruck.” Shakman is more succinct: “It was the best afternoon of my life.”
They weren’t there just to catch up with a 93-year-old legend. They were about to start production on an innovative Disney+ series called WandaVision — which Shakman will only describe as a “love letter to television” — and they wanted to hear about the star’s experiences on his groundbreaking 1960s sitcom, The Dick Van Dyke Show.
Van Dyke waxed about his fellow actor and the show creator, Carl Reiner, who mined real-life anecdotes for the episodes, as well as his own delight at filming in front of live studio audiences.
In turn, Feige talked about the new series he was executive-producing with Shakman, among others. “I tried to explain how there was this robot and a witch and how she had to kill him because Thanos reversed time,” he says with a laugh. “I’m thinking, ‘He doesn’t need to hear this!'”
With the premiere of WandaVision on January 15, it will all click. Set after the events of the 2019 blockbuster Avengers: Endgame, the weekly series — which is patterned on prototypical sitcoms of various eras — explores the adventures of Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and her love, an android named Vision (Paul Bettany).
Yes, Vision died when the Mind Stone was ripped from his forehead in the 2018 film Avengers: Infinity War, and he is still dead. But rules can be malleable when one of the two main characters is also known as Scarlet Witch.
“What I love about Wanda in the comic books, and what drew me to her originally,” Olsen says, “is what we get to explore in a beautiful way.” To that end, even a witch couldn’t have manipulated the series’ timing any better.
When Disney+ launched in November 2019, it did so with the promise that the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) would soon unveil new series based on some of its lower-profile action heroes. At last, fans of the gazillion-grossing, 23-movie Infinity Saga would enjoy extensive and exclusive insights into the likes of Falcon, the Winter Soldier, Wanda, Vision, Loki and others, all in episodic installments.
December
28
2020
Studio Photoshoots > 2020 > Session 001
TV Series > WandaVision (2020) > Season 1 > Poster
TV Series > WandaVision (2020) > Season 1 > Production Stills
Magazine Scans > 2020 > Entertainment Weekly (December)
Magazine Scans > 2021 > Empire (January)
Magazine Scans > 2021 > Premiere (Jan-Feb)
December
22
2020
DEADLINE – Just more than a month before its Disney+ debut, Marvel’s WandaVision dropped a new trailer at Disney Investor Day presentation Thursday – and it really shakes things up.
Starring Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany as Avengers vets Wanda Maximoff and Vision, the latest look at the January 15-premiering series had a lot of genres and a lot of shifting timelines.
Set after the events of Avengers: Endgame, the deceptively domestic WandaVision co-stars Kat Dennings, Teyonah Parris, Randall Park and Kathryn Hahn. Matt Shakman directs and Jac Schaeffer is the head writer on the MCU show.
December
15
2020
THE DIRECT – According to Benedict Cumberbatch, filming for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was previously reported to begin in early-November. This does make everything seem quite tight, considering he will be reprising the role of Doctor Strange in Spider-Man 3 while Elizabeth Olsen was still finishing with WandaVision.
There have been some questions about whether filming for the multiverse movie was delayed slightly from when Cumberbatch was last informed. Olsen has already revealed that filming for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness would last until at least Christmas for her, but according to the latest Empire interview, Olsen is apparently already filming the Doctor Strange sequel in London.
In the expose on WandaVison in the latest issue of Empire, it was noted that by the time the issue was released, Elizabeth Olsen would be in London shooting Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
Elizabeth Olsen actually specifies that she will be filming for Wanda’s character “back-to-back,” implying that she began filming for the Doctor Strange sequel shortly after filming wrapped for WandaVision.
“I’ve spent the last year with Wanda. And it’s actually incredible to go back-to-back because I feel I can contribute so much more now.”
WHAT THIS MEANS
Elizabeth Olsen’s filming schedule actually tells fans quite a bit about other productions since filming for WandaVision apparently reached an end around the beginning of November. At around the same time, Benedict Cumberbatch was on the set of Spider-Man 3 in Atlanta, Georgia, by at least the end of October.
If Elizabeth Olsen did indeed begin filming for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness shortly after finishing with WandaVision, that could imply that Benedict Cumberbatch didn’t shoot for long in Atlanta for Spider-Man 3. At a minimum, Cumberbatch could have been shooting in Atlanta for two weeks, maybe three.
Still, just because Olsen has started filming doesn’t automatically mean that Cumberbatch must be present too, as there are likely scenes with Wanda without the Sorcerer Supreme. Olsen and the team could film such scenes first before Cumberbatch arrives.
It is still unknown what kind of role Doctor Strange will have in Spider-Man 3. Still, considering it seems more and more likely that a multiverse element will be present in the movie, his role has to be more important than a small cameo like in Thor: Ragnarok.
Filed under: News, WandaVision
November
26
2020
Empire magazine has unveiled its latest newsstand and subscriber covers, and they give us a new look at WandaVision’s loved up Avengers, Vision (Paul Bettany) and Scarlet Witch (Elisabeth Olsen)...
COMICBOOKMOVIE.COM – WandaVision is set to be the first of Marvel’s upcoming Disney+ shows to debut on the streaming service, and Empire has now shared a new look at Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany as the titular MCU heroes on their latest covers.
The newsstand cover features The MCU’s “strangest couple” looking blissfully happy together in their sitcom-like reality as their true, superhero identities begin to seep in. The stunning subscriber cover by artist Max Löffler, meanwhile, features a more robotic, Metropolis-inspired interpretation of the Vision. Of course, Wanda is never far from his mind!
WandaVision was originally scheduled to premiere next month, but Marvel recently announced that the show would not be hitting the Disney+ streaming service until January 15, making this the first year since 2009 that no new Marvel Studios content has been released. 2020 gonna 2020.
Filed under: News, WandaVision
November
22
2020
Remember those Marvel TV shows we were promised like a million years ago?
BUZZFEED – Well, one of them finally has a release date, and it’s WandaVision! Drumroll please..
A new era arrives. Marvel Studios’ @WandaVision, an Original Series, is streaming Jan. 15 on #DisneyPlus. pic.twitter.com/aejE6DNR35
— Marvel Studios (@MarvelStudios) November 12, 2020
The show, along with The Falcon and the Winter Solider, was supposed to premiere this year, but 2020 had other plans. I know the concept of 2021 seems abstract and impossible, but it’s less than two months away!
At this point, it’s not entirely clear what exactly we should expect from WandaVision. The trailer honestly left me with more questions than answers.
Here’s what we know for sure: We’re gonna see Wanda and Vision in a bunch of different eras, including the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s. This is probably due to Wanda’s reality-altering abilities.
There’s definitely a part of the show that pays homage to the classic sitcoms of the ’50s, like this scene that is reminiscent of I Love Lucy. The trailer seems to hint that there will also be more ~dramatic~ elements.
Here’s to 2021 starting off RIGHT.
.
Filed under: News, WandaVision
November
22
2020
EMPIRE – Ever since her introduction in the post-credits sequence of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Wanda Maximoff has always been an ensemble player in its subsequent superhero smackdowns, realigning her allegiances in Age Of Ultron, joining the airport fray in Civil War, and making sure Thanos knew exactly what she was capable of in the finale of Endgame. But she’s never been centre stage before, until now. In WandaVision, the first of the MCU’s upcoming run of Disney+ limited series which tie directly into the long-running movie franchise, she’s the star of the show, paired up once again with Paul Bettany’s Vision for a mind-bending sitcom-inspired comic book mystery.
Elizabeth Olsen’s character, aka Scarlet Witch, might have proved she was more powerful than we were ever aware of at the end of Endgame, but audiences are about to understand her a whole lot better – including what exactly she can do with those Mind Stone-imbued powers. “If you look at the Infinity Saga, I don’t think any single person has gone through more pain and trauma than Wanda Maximoff. And no character seems to be as powerful as Wanda Maximoff. And no character has a power-set that is as ill-defined and unexplored as Wanda Maximoff,” MCU boss Kevin Feige tells Empire. “So it seemed exploring that would be worthwhile post-Endgame. Who else is aware of that power? Where did it come from? Did the Mind Stone unlock it?”
The natural vehicle to explore that power-set? A six-episode romp through sitcom history, with Wanda experiencing a reality that sees her somehow living the American Dream with her robo-beau – despite the fact that we saw him definitively cark it in Infinity War. The results should be like nothing Marvel – or anyone else, for that matter – has done before, bringing superhero set-pieces and psychological character study to an unabashed love-letter to classic domestic situation comedies. “I loved TV, and watched far too much The Dick Van Dyke Show and I Love Lucy and Bewitched and everything,” Feige says of his viewing habits as a kid. And while the bits we’ve seen of WandaVision so far tease homages to old black-and-white series, it has plenty more up its sleeve. “We go up to the Modern Family and The Office style,” Feige reveals. “The talk-to-the-camera, shaky-camera, documentary style.”
November
22
2020
The upcoming Disney+ series is a wonderfully weird send-up of sitcoms of the past — and Marvel’s key to the future. Don’t touch that dial.
EW – Last year, the notoriously secretive Marvel Studios did something unprecedented: It opened its set to visitors. WandaVision, the six-hour series about Elizabeth Olsen’s reality-altering witch and Paul Bettany’s charming android, takes inspiration from beloved TV comedies, from campy 1950s classics to the zany family shows of the ’90s. So for its premiere episode, Marvel’s first Disney+ TV show went full midcentury sitcom, filming in classic black and white in front of a live studio audience (all of whom signed very, very strict NDAs).
Crew members came to set in ’50s-era clothing, and used period lenses and lighting to capture that dreamy vintage glow. The special-effects team employed wires and camera tricks straight from Bewitched or I Dream of Jeannie, making wine bottles appear to pour on their own and household appliances zoom about like magic. And when Vision’s familiar maroon skin didn’t look quite right in grayscale, the makeup artists painted Bettany blue instead.
Bettany and Olsen rehearsed their entrances and exits as if putting on a play, and at first, they say the notion of live performance terrified them more than any Marvel supervillain. But by the time they secured their first audience chuckle, the pair realized they might have missed their calling as sitcom stars. “It was insanity,” Olsen, 31, says with a laugh. “There was something very meta for my own life because I would visit those tapings as a kid, where my sisters were working [on Full House].”
“We were all so high by the end of it, we wanted to keep on running the show,” Bettany, 49, adds. “Maybe take it out on tour or something. WandaVision on ice.”
GALLERY LINKS
TV Series > WandaVision (2020) > Season 1 > EW Speccial “WandaVision” Edition
WandaVision was never intended to kick off this new era of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. After 2019’s Avengers: Endgame closed out the Infinity Saga (and served as a dramatic retirement party for several of the franchise’s heroes), 2020 was supposed to launch what Marvel calls Phase 4: Black Widow and Eternals were both slated to hit theaters, and a series about The Falcon and the Winter Soldier would debut on Disney+ in the fall, the first of many Marvel TV shows planned for the streaming service. But after the ongoing coronavirus pandemic shut down theaters and shuttered production around the world, it was the strange, sweet WandaVision that was closest to completion, and it will now be the first to bow, premiering on Disney+ this winter. [Due to the mercurial nature of scheduling in the pandemic, an exact premiere date was unavailable at press time.]
November
11
2020
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