Moon Knight head writer Jeremy Slater offered some insight into what sold Kevin Feige on the Disney+ series. Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige has been one of the biggest proponents of Moon Knight behind the scenes. Feige even had a hand in convincing Oscar Isaac to sign up to play Marc Spector / Moon Knight. One problem a segment of fans always come back to is Moon Knight’s comparison to DC’s Batman. However, Moon Knight writer Jeremy Slater revealed how aspects like Marc Spector’s dissociative identity disorder, ties to Egyptian mythology, and even fan-favorite Moon Knight runs from the comics were major factors in Feige giving the series a green light.
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“That’s always been a little bit of a Moon Knight problem is, in the wrong hands, he’s just a sort of Batman clone with a pallet swap and Batman’s got an 80-year head start on us. It’s very easy to do something that would just feel super derivative,” Slater told ComicBook.com “They gave us this and they’re like, ‘Look, he loves the mental health aspect. He loves the dissociative identity disorder and he’s really drawn to the Egyptology. He likes the Jeff Lemire run, the idea that you could be on the bus and look out the window and see an Egyptian god standing on the street corner.’ That was something Kevin [Feige] sort of identified early-on of like, ‘Okay, well, that’s interesting. That’s unique.’ That’s kind of all the information I had going in.”
All of these factors helped make Moon Knight stand out from Marvel’s previous Disney+ content, as well as movies on the big screen. Moon Knight was also the first Disney+ series not to feature any established Marvel guest stars. While no other Marvel heroes showed up to offer an assist to Moon Knight in his battle against Arthur Harrow, his wife Layla El-Faouly (May Calamawy) did suit up as Tawaret’s avatar, the Scarlet Scarab.
Speaking to Empire for a new issue of the magazine, Feige explained that getting Oscar Isaac into the MCU was all about collaboration. Once the idea for Moon Knight came up, both sides were interested in exploring the partnership.
“We’ve always loved Moon Knight… he always fascinated us as something we hadn’t seen before, [so] when the Disney+ idea came up, it quickly became one of the first things we wanted to do, because we loved the story,” Feige said.
“We’d always liked [Isaac]… and he clearly likes this world – Star Wars, X-Men – but we hadn’t found the right thing, necessarily,” he continued. “We started talking [about Moon Knight], and he had a couple of outside-the-box ideas that we were like, ‘Maybe this could work..: And spoiler alert: they do.”
All episodes of Moon Knight are available to stream on Disney+
Photo credit Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Disney
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Image Credit: Netflix
