Paul Bettany Says WandaVision Is Like A Six-Hour Movie

Avengers: Endgame has come and gone, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe is on to Phase 4. WandaVision is one of the more mysterious properties going into the new slate of projects. Paul Bettany and Elizabeth Olsen are both on record talking about how much of a departure the series will be for the larger MCU. Bettany even mentioned that this show feels a lot like making a six-hour-long movie, rather than a TV show.

Vison and Scarlet Witch will be tackling suburbian life as the adventures look and feel like a 1950s family sitcom. During the presentation at D23, the footage from the project was intercut with clips from the Dick Van Dyke show to cement the retro feel further. Bettany talked about his experience in the new format with MTV News. Vision was understandably absent from the big battle during Endgame. The next time fans see him will be part of this very different experience.

“Oh, I don’t think that myself or Lizzie have ever been more surprised when Kevin pitched the idea to us.” Bettany explained to the channel. “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.”

Odd seems to be a keyword in the proceedings because no Marvel television project has held this kind of tone. Disney+ seems like the perfect avenue to pursue a project like WandaVision because it might be hard to sell audiences on such a risk in the theater. The series doesn’t sound that much wilder than some of the stranger prestige TV offerings that have popped up in recent years. Showrunner Jac Schaeffer has promised fans that although the experience has been tailored for the small screen, there will still be that bold Marvel feeling to the series.

“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 said to Variety.

He concluded “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.”