WandaVision Director Teases Sitcom Blended with “Huge, Epic” Marvel Action

Director Matt Shakman (Game of Thrones, The Boys) says Marvel Studios’ WandaVision blends “classic sitcom” and “huge, epic” Marvel action. Spinning out of Avengers: Endgame and exploring the personal lives of Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany), the Disney+ exclusive series set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is, in part, a riff on The Dick Van Dyke Show — and like most classic sitcoms, WandaVision is centered around the relationship and dynamic shared by its two titular characters.

“We can’t say much. It’s all pretty much on lockdown at this moment, but all we can say really is it’s a blend of classic sitcom and huge, epic Marvel action,” Shakman told Extra Butter at D23 Expo. On turning the MCU on its head, Shakman added, the franchise is “always surprising.”

Shakman previously told Variety WandaVision is the exploration of the “unusual pairing” between Wanda and synthetic android Vision.

“He’s not human but he’s more human than anyone, maybe. He always has the best, most wise things to say. He completely sees the world for what it is. She’s gone through so much trauma. She’s lost her brother, she’s an orphan, and all these different things have happened to her,” Shakman said. “I think we’ve all been quite taken by that union. It’s the exploration of that bizarre, strange, completely right kind of love and it’s about watching them explore their relationship and growing it.”

Star Bettany has similarly described the series as a sitcom that snowballs into an epic Marvel movie.

“Oh, I don’t think that myself or Lizzie have ever been more surprised when [Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige] pitched the idea to us,” Bettany told MTV at D23. “A, and one, I thought I was being brought in to be fired; B and two, I thought they were gonna let me down, you know, like, ‘Listen, Paul, we love you, but…’ And instead what he did was pitch this idea for a sort of six-hour movie that I would never in a million years — which is why he’s the one earning the really big bucks — have thought of. And it’s so avant-garde and weird and messed up and then moves seamlessly into more familiar territory. But the place that it starts is so odd.”

In bringing WandaVision to the small screen as part of Phase 4, showrunner Jac Schaeffer promises the series aims for the same scope as any of Marvel Studios’ big screen blockbusters.

“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 previously told Variety. “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.”

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.