Wandavision Showrunner Says Disney+ Marvel Shows Feel Like an “Enormous Movie”

WandaVision showrunner Jac Schaeffer says her show and other announced Marvel Studios series coming to Disney+ will capture the “big screen” experience on television.

“I mean, first of all, with Marvel doing Disney+, it’s not at all the small screen, you know? It’s still the big screen, but streaming,” Schaeffer told Variety at D23 Expo. “And so there’s still the same sense of grandeur and the same scope and the same opportunities and the same resources, so it just really feels like an enormous movie. We say it’s like a run of a comic, which is just really exciting to do.”

Unlike Marvel Television’s since-cancelled crop of interconnected shows that aired on Netflix — set in their own corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe but largely independent of the movie side of the franchise — the series planned for Disney+ are crafted by Marvel Studios and overseen by president Kevin Feige, who promises the series will tie directly into the feature films.

“These will be Marvel Studios productions,” Feige told ComicBook.com in February. “They will be entirely interwoven with both the current MCU, the past MCU, and the future of the MCU.”

As part of her position as showrunner, Schaeffer will be tasked with weaving WandaVision into Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, where Elizabeth Olsen reprises her role as Wanda Maximoff alongside Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sorcerer Supreme. Feige confirmed the connection when detailing Marvel Studios’ Phase 4 slate at San Diego Comic-Con in July.

“These episodes will intersect with the movies in a very big way. It’s a totally new form of storytelling that we get to play with and explore,” Feige told Variety at Comic-Con. “It’s the first long-form narrative that Marvel Studios has done — they’ll be six episodes, eight episodes, 10 episodes with the actors from the films playing their characters. They’ll be changing, evolving, growing in those event series and then those changes will be reflected in their next film appearances.”

Other Marvel stars returning on Disney+ alongside WandaVision stars Olsen and Paul Bettany include Tom Hiddleston in Loki, Jeremy Renner in Hawkeye, and Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Emily VanCamp and Daniel Brühl in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

Disney+ launches November 12. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier begins streaming fall 2020, ahead of the spring 2021 debuts of WandaVision and Loki; the animated What If…? follows in summer 2021 ahead of the fall 2021 release of Hawkeye.