Marvel Studios has had an outstanding track record of success, most recently demonstrated by Doctor Strange, which has finished No. 1 at the box office during the past two weekends and grossed more than $150 million in U.S. theaters. But part of success is also knowing when to walk away from something that’s not working, and that may be what happened with a property for which Marvel once had grand plans.
According to The Hollywood Reporter‘s Lesley Goldberg, Marvel is developing The Inhumans as a TV series with ABC, eyeing a Fall 2017 premiere for an eight-episode season. Normally, a TV series from Marvel would be seen as big news, considering the success the studio has had with three shows — Daredevil, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage — on Netflix. And this could still be big news. The Marvel brand carries a lot of weight in pop culture right now. (Whether or not it’s helped ABC’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is probably debatable, however.)
What makes this Inhumans news surprising is that Marvel originally intended this story to be part of its “Phase Three” slate of films which began with this year’s Captain America: Civil War. The project was announced more than two years ago, scheduled for a Nov. 2, 2018 release. That date put Inhumans toward the end of Phase Three, shortly before the fourth Avengers film.
Earlier this year, Marvel said it would push the project to July 2019, making room for two films that weren’t originally part of the Phase Three slate: Spider-Man: Homecoming and Ant-Man & The Wasp. That seemed understandable, as both movies were the result of unexpected developments. Marvel reached an agreement to share the Spider-Man rights with Sony and produce a new movie featuring its most popular character. And 2015’s Ant-Man was likely a bigger success than expected, fueling interest in another film, rather than just folding those characters into an Avengers film.
Yet a few months later, Marvel pushed Inhumans back yet again and this time, it wasn’t to make room for any other project (though more will surely be in development). Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige then admitted that a release date was uncertain for the movie, as Disney was eyeing a new Indiana Jones film for that July 2019 spot. Rumors soon circulated that Marvel had decided to cancel the Inhumans movie, though the studio never confirmed that.
The concept of humans mutating after exposure to an alien mist which would either kill them or give them extraordinary abilities was used in season three of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., which seemed like a clever way of introducing the idea to audiences before developing a movie. Speculation was that Inhumans would be Marvel’s answer to mutants, which the studio can’t use since Fox owns the rights to the X-Men franchise. But with the news that The Inhumans will now be an ABC series, it seems to kill any chances of a big-screen film for the property.
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Inhumans may have been better suited as a TV series to begin with, featuring a royal family premise that many fans and observers compared to a potential Game of Thrones type of story. According to THR, this will not be a spinoff from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. which follows characters whose abilities and appearance have caused them to go into hiding and live as extreme minorities. The official release from Marvel touts an “epic adventure” and specifically mentions Black Bolt, the king of this empire who cannot speak because his voice is so powerful that the slightest whisper would cause a massive shockwave. (Rumors once attached Vin Diesel to the character in a film version.)
Other characters not mentioned — but likely to be part of the series if it follows the Marvel Comics concept — are Medusa, Black Bolt’s wife and queen of the Inhumans; Gorgon, Karnak and Triton, all of whom have developed unusual abilities (such as tensile hair, hoofed feet and amphibious breathing) due to their exposure to Terrigen Mists. Another popular character associated with The Inhumans is Lockjaw, a giant bulldog which has the ability to teleport. The guess here is that we won’t see much of him, as that would be difficult to create on a broadcast TV budget. (This ain’t HBO, or even Netflix.) How much of the Inhumans’ abilities and appearance will be affected by being on television isn’t yet known, but it’s highly likely that the character and set designs won’t be as extravagant as they would have been in a big-budget movie.
But those hoping for an Inhumans movie will sort of get their wish. In its announcement, Marvel revealed that the production will be filmed entirely with IMAX cameras and the first two episodes of the series will be shown in IMAX theaters, the first TV show to ever debut in that format and in commercial movie theaters. The two episodes will have a two-week run on IMAX screens before The Inhumans premieres on ABC. The budget for those first two episodes might be huge, after all, to take full advantage of being shown on those enormous screens.
That might be some consolation for a bold, ambitious project which appears to be taking a significant step backwards. But it might seem less disappointing if we get that giant dog.
