Having dominated the feature film landscape for well over a decade, and already conquered episodic storytelling thanks to awards season darling WandaVision, politically-tinged action thriller The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and the time traveling chaos of Loki, the Marvel Cinematic Universe looks to be setting its sights on the animated realm.
No matter which side of the Marvel vs. DC divide you fall on, nobody’s going to argue that the latter boasts the vastly superior back catalogue of animated content, and has done for almost 30 years dating back to Batman: The Animated Series. The former has tended to outsource their 2D projects to other production houses, but that could be set to change after Executive Vice President of Film Production Victoria Alonso teased a new studio was being formed specifically to focus on animation.
As per tipster Mikey Sutton, a Doctor Strange series is poised to be one of the freshly-founded outfit’s first endeavors. According to Sutton, the show will venture further into the realms of horror and adopt something of an anthology format by drawing inspiration from the Strange Tales run that initially hit shelves between 1951 to 1968, and told a string of wild genre-infused tales that often saw Marvel Comics characters drop by from time to time.
Not everything the company churns out has to be tied directly to the MCU, but based on the events of Loki it looks as though What If…? still might. However, a horror-tinged Doctor Strange animated show has plenty of potential for fantastical adventures, and could allow a whole new set of stories to be told that Kevin Feige and his team wouldn’t even consider giving the live-action treatment.