Marvel Studios dropped its first trailer for the upcoming Marvel Zombies, a four-part streaming event releasing this September on Disney+. I am not the biggest fan of Marvel’s Zombies, but this trailer added some excitement to the event for me. But before I get into my personal feelings on the show, let me first describe why this show will be different from anything we’ve seen from Marvel yet, outside of maybe Deadpool & Wolverine. The show is full of blood, gore, and swearing. In other words, it’s just my cup of tea.
Marvel first cropped up in print back in September of 2005, which explains why Marvel waited until September to release the film on the 20th anniversary of the concept’s introduction. The original story was done by The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman and artist Sean Phillips, but they were following up on two Ultimate Fantastic Four stories by Mark Millar and Greg Land. The series has since become a favorite amongst fans.
This version of Marvel Zombies is branching off an episode of What If…? called What If… Zombies!? It will feature Awkwafina, David Harbour, Simu Liu, Elizabeth Olsen, Randall Park, Florence Pugh, Paul Rudd, Wyatt Russell, Hailee Steinfeld, Tessa Thompson, Dominique Thorne, Iman Vellani, and Todd Williams. It is considered to be part of Phase 6. Given the large cast and hype surrounding the event, it’s clear that Marvel sees this as a huge opportunity to get things back on track.
In the show, most of the world’s population has been zombified, including many of the Avengers. The series will follow the remaining human survivors as they try to find a way to end the pandemic, as well as trying to save their former friends and teammates. Their adventures will take them across time and space, and they’ll even encounter new heroes that we haven’t met before.
One interesting thing to note about this series is that Todd Williams is voicing the role of Eric Brooks/Blade Knight, who is a mix of Blade and Moon Knight. As many readers on BSO will undoubtedly know, Mahershala Ali was cast as Blade back in July of 2019, and the most we’ve gotten out of that announcement was an off-camera appearance in a post-credit scene of The Eternals, where he warned Kit Harrington’s character, Dane Whitman, not to touch the Ebony Blade.
Since then, it’s been nothing but production hell for the film. The last update we got was that the film is still very much a go. In fact, Kevin Feige offered up some explanations as to why the film hasn’t been made already. Much of it has to do with Feige’s respect for Ali and wanting to put him in a position to succeed. Here’s what Feige said to Variety back in July.
“We didn’t want to simply just put a leather outfit on him and have him start killing vampires. It had to be unique,” Feige stated. “It fell into the time when we started pulling back and saying, ‘Only accept insanely great.’ And it wasn’t ‘insanely great’ at the time. We didn’t feel like, as we often do, [that] you can have a good script and make it a great script through production. We didn’t feel confident that we could do that on ‘Blade,’ and we didn’t want to do that to Mahershala and didn’t want to do that to us.”
I absolutely agree with Feige’s decision here, especially when you frame it in the context of some of Marvel’s recent releases. The disastrous and very short-lived Bob Chapek experiment at Disney caused great harm to Marvel’s momentum. Demanding that Marvel continue to churn out title after title, regardless of their quality, led to a massive decline in the overall perception of Marvel and their ability to do no wrong. They could have put Ali in a super crappy Blade film just to get it out the door, and that may have caused Marvel to bail on using the character again, just like they did with The Eternals after that failed.
Either way, Williams and the upcoming Marvel Zombies series look absolutely outstanding. My hope for this project is that it increases the overall demand for a Blade film or introduction. The character is too iconic, and Mahershala Ali is the perfect actor to portray the character. Since Blade Knight will be a central figure in Marvel Zombies, there’s a good chance that people are going to be talking about him on websites and videos on YouTube.
As a bonus, you will get to see something that you rarely see in live action, and that is a Spider-Man that isn’t pulling his punches and showing the full capabilities of his power.
I wasn’t looking forward to Marvel Zombies, but now I definitely am. There’s enough intrigue and hope surrounding this project for me to want to dive in and explore this world. I may even go back and actually watch more of the What If… ? show that I didn’t really care for, just so I can understand and appreciate Marvel Zombies that much more. When all other advertising fails, showing me swears, blood, and gore is a surefire way to get me to commit. Well done, Marvel Zombies. Well done.
