Wonder Man Crew Member Dies After Accident on Marvel Set

A crew member working on set construction for Wonder Man has passed away after a fall earlier today. The worker, a rigger at CBS Radford Studios in Los Angeles, fell from the rafters. He passed away shortly after the fall. The series, which aims to start production next month, is in pre-production following a delay due to the contract dispute between studios and both writers and actors, which led to strikes that shut down Hollywood for most of the summer. The project has been in development for some time, but few details about its timetable or its place in the MCU have been revealed as yet.

Wonder Man, created and executive produced by created by Destin Daniel Cretton and Andrew Guest, will star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II in the title role as Simon Williams / Wonder Man, alongside Ed Harris, Demetrius Grosse, Josh Gad, Lauren Glazier, and Ben Kingsley, who will reprise his role as Trevor Slattery from Iron Man 3.

Deadline first reported the news. A Marvel spokesperson told the trade,  “Our thoughts and deepest condolences are with his family and friends, and our support is behind the investigation into the circumstances of this accident.”

Wonder Man centers on Simon Williams, an actor and stunt man who develops super powers and becomes a flashy, celebrity-friendly superhero. Cretton, who previously directed Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and Disney+’s adaptation of American Born Chinese, has been developing the series since 2021, and production started briefly last spring before stopping for the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. 

Previously, Nathan Fillion had been rumored for the role of Simon Williams, as he appeared as the character on movie posters, in a cut sequence from James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2. Abdul-Mateen, meanwhile, already has plenty of genre bona fides, having played Black Manta in a pair of Aquaman movies and Doctor Manhattan in the acclaimed Watchmen TV miniseries.

Wonder Man is expected to be released as part of the Marvel Spotlight banner, which is supposedly about telling smaller, more character-focused stories that don’t necessarily feed into the main MCU timeline or mythology.