Loki, Scarlet Witch, To Get TV Shows on Disney's Streaming Service

Disney’s streaming service is going to be the one-stop shop for everything Disney, Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars. But it’s not just the company’s huge battery of movies and shows that we can expect to see there, but original content as well. Variety is reporting that Disney plans to go big with some of the content, dropping big bucks and big names to attract viewers to its service. Namely, Disney wants to pull actors from the Marvel Cinematic Universe for at least two shows based on their characters.

According to the report, the characters with series in development right now include Loki and Scarlet Witch, though other series are possible as well. Instead of recasting these roles, though, Disney wants to pull in Tom Hiddleston and Elizabeth Olsen, the actors who play these characters in movies like Thor: Ragnarok and Avengers: Infinity War. Variety‘s sources aren’t giving numbers on the production budgets behind these efforts, but says they are “expected to be hefty, rivaling those of a major studio production.”

The shows will be produced by Marvel Studios – the production house behind the MCU films – and MCU Overlord Kevin Feige will have a hands-on role. Marvel isn’t looking to turn these into ongoing things, necessarily. Each series is said to be a limited run of 6-to-8 episodes. While the studio will be pulling in major talent for these series, don’t expect them to become required viewing for MCU fluency. Variety‘s sources say that characters who have headlined movies won’t be popping up in these shows. That means that we shouldn’t expect Iron Man or Thor but might need to brace ourselves for Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye.

These series will be completely separate from the company’s Netflix series; less adult and designed to appeal to a larger audience. Creating original content like this is going to be important for Disney’s streaming service, though it’s decision to stop putting new Disney-published films on Netflix will certainly help make it more appealing, too. The service is set to go online sometime next year. It’s likely Disney is going to want some original content as close to launch as possible, but there’s no word on how far into development these shows are, or if they’re even getting past the planning stages. Marvel isn’t the only arm of the Disney empire to get the series treatment. There’s a Jon Favreau-helmed Star Wars series in development.

This is a story we’re going to be following as it develops, so keep checking back. Which second-tier MCU characters do you want to see get their own series? Can we get a Shuri show? I’d pay for a Shuri show.