An MCU director has confirmed one upcoming Disney+ show will be a major, movie-like crossover event. With the launch of Disney+, Marvel Studios quickly began peddling out content for the new streaming service, bringing back its biggest stars for blockbuster series, most of which followed like movies broken up into chapters. This resulted in creations such as The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, Moon Knight, Secret Invasion, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, and more, all of which were treated as movie-level events, albeit to varying degrees of success.
More recently, Marvel Studios has responded to Disney+ backlash by treating its streaming shows like the TV they are. The behind-the-scenes has resulted in more episodic creations such as Daredevil: Born Again, with hopes of running shows for multiple seasons on an annual release schedule. Coming up on Disney+, the MCU has Marvel Zombies, Wonder Man, Daredevil: Born Again Season 2, Vision Quest, and The Punisher's Special Presentation slated for 2025 and 2026 release.
Marvel Zombies director Bryan Andrews recently spoke with Collider and described the 2025 animated series as a "four-episode mini-event." The R-rated epic, which will cross-over dozens of both undead and alive alternate versions of MCU characters amongst each other, will explore the Marvel apocalypse across four chapters, but Andrew also revealed it was almost a movie at one stage in development.
While they were "thinking it'd be a movie," Andrews noted that "certain issues" came along that led to it becoming a Disney+ event series instead:
"Oh, no. It's like a through line. It's like, originally, we were thinking it'd be a movie, if like, 'Ooh, we should release it as a movie.' We should just do a movie. But there were some things that came up, certain issues that we just had to kind of, ‘Oh let’s break it. We'll have to break it up into four episodes.’"
He went on to promise that Marvel Zombies follows "one story" chopped up into multiple episodes, as opposed to other MCU animated shows that have taken an anthology format, such as What If...? and Eyes of Wakanda:
"So basically it's like a four-episode mini-event, like a film broke up into four parts, basically. So yeah, it's definitely… It's one story. It's one throughline. A lot of insanity happens."
The news of Marvel Zombies' brief four-episode run had some hoping for episodes stretching as long as an hour. But, if the series was indeed planned as a movie, then sliced into four chapters, each will presumably be around 30 minutes for an approximate total runtime of two hours, akin to an average MCU flick.
In terms of why Marvel Zombies is releasing as an event series and not a Disney+ Original Movie, that may have something to do with Spider-Man. The wall-crawler will officially return in the 2025 series, and, as Sony Pictures holds the movie rights to Spider-Man, Marvel Studios may have had no choice but to switch gears to TV.
The MCU's 4 Other Major Disney+ Event Series
WandaVision
WandaVision became a Disney+ event unlike any other as it broke an almost two-year drought of MCU content and marked Marvel Studios' first big-budget show. It also brought back two major Avengers with Elizabeth Olsen's Wanda Maximoff and Paul Bettany's Vision, with a key mystery on how the latter was alive.
Beyond just being Marvel Studios' first blockbuster series, WandaVision became a true pop culture event across its eight-week run. Due to the show's mysterious, reality-bending sitcom nature, fans were always speculating week-to-week what was coming next and who might show up, such as Mephisto...
Loki
To this day, Loki, across both seasons, may be the biggest event that the MCU has had to offer on Disney+. After all, in the Multiverse Saga, Loki truly set up the concept of alternate timelines and introduced the all-important TVA.
Tom Hiddleston's Loki and his Disney+ series will reportedly carry immense importance going into Avengers: Doomsday. Both were almost even more significant given that Loki debuted Jonathan Majors' Kang into the MCU, setting him up as Avengers 5's big villain until plans shifted.
Secret Invasion
Marvel Studios itself touted Secret Invasion as a "crossover event" series as it brought together characters from the Captain Marvel, Black Panther, and Iron Man franchises, along with the larger MCU, for an adaptation of a major comic story.
While the Skrull-infused paranoia thriller landed to disappointing reviews, its event status is hard to dispute, especially having placed Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury at the center for the first time in his over-a-decade-long MCU tenure.
Daredevil: Born Again
Daredevil: Born Again may not have lived up to viewership expectations, but there's no denying the series had far more anticipation than other recent MCU releases. Not only did Born Again mark the MCU's first R-rated series, but it also finally reintroduced Netflix's Defenders into the mainline franchise.
Fortunately, there is plenty more to come as Season 2 is now in production and Born Again seemingly won't be going anywhere anytime soon.
