{"id":417773,"date":"2026-04-26T01:52:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-26T01:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/417773\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T01:52:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T01:52:08","slug":"wonder-man-for-disney-began-as-a-joke-pitch-says-ep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/417773\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Wonder Man’ For Disney+ Began As A Joke Pitch. Says EP"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe new Disney+<\/a> eight-part series\u00a0Wonder Man<\/a>, starring Yahya Abdul-Mateen II<\/a> and Sir Ben Kingsley, all started as a joke. During a Deadline Contenders TV panel Executive Producer Destin Daniel Cretton<\/a> got quite candid with how it all came to be. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe genesis of the idea actually sprouted when we were on the set of Shang Chi and I just loved working with Sir Ben [Kingsley, as Trevor Slattery] and I really loved his character and I really feel like in every movie Trevor Slattery has been such a standout and under utilized,\u201d said Cretton. So I did a joke pitch to my producer Jonathan Schwartz and said \u2018We should do Trevor Goes To Hollywood.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThen the joke got legs, and a car. \u201cThe joke pitch kind of escalated because [Schwartz], as a joke, made a poster with our art department of Trevor Goes to Hollywood with Trevor Slattery in a convertible and it looked 1980s. And I thought we have to do this show! So that\u2019s how it began.\u201d And thus this atypical Marvel<\/a> Universe show was born.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tEP Destin Daniel Cretton says it all started to come together when he found out there was a similar project in the works. \u201cThen when we were really pitching the show we found out that Wonder Man was also being developed around what would a show be like in the MC Hollywood. Those two ideas collided and that\u2019s when Andrew [Guest, EP] came in and helped us create the real vibe of the show.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tRELATED: Full Coverage Of Deadline\u2019s Contenders TV Event<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tThe show revolves around struggling actor Simon Williams\u00a0(Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) who has a\u00a0chance\u00a0meeting with Slattery which leads to his dream role in the remake of \u2018Wonder Man.\u2019 But he has to hide his super abilities due to the Hollywood \u201cDoorman Clause\u201d which states that no one with supernatural abilities can work in film and tv.<\/p>\n

\n\tYahya calls working with Sir Ben Kingsley a \u2018labor of respect.\u2019 Sharing what he learned from working with the legendary Academy Award winner, \u201cSir Ben told me early on, he said \u2018look the time outside of action and cut is not for us it\u2019s for everybody else. All we get as actors is the time between action and cut and we treated it as sacred and allowed the camera to find what was between us and it was really a pleasure.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut it wasn\u2019t smooth sailing for this first season. Executive Producer Andrew Guest<\/a> shares that they were almost half way through the production when the strike hit, and it wasn\u2019t looking good for the future of Wonder Man. \u201cThis was a risk creatively for Marvel and I think it was one they reexamined during the strike. It\u2019s been this underground project that the people at Marvel believed in.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCheck back Monday for the panel video.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The new Disney+ eight-part series\u00a0Wonder Man, starring Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Sir Ben Kingsley, all started as a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":417774,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[183108,68437,183109,63199,9618,93,61,60,2563,270,49388,141084],"class_list":{"0":"post-417773","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-andrew-guest","9":"tag-awardsnews","10":"tag-contenders-tv","11":"tag-destin-daniel-cretton","12":"tag-disney","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-marvel","17":"tag-movies","18":"tag-wonder-man","19":"tag-yahya-abdul-mateen-ii"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417773\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/417774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}