The new Disney+ eight-part series Wonder Man, starring Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Sir Ben Kingsley, all started as a joke. During a Deadline Contenders TV panel Executive Producer Destin Daniel Cretton got quite candid with how it all came to be.
“The 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,” said Cretton. So I did a joke pitch to my producer Jonathan Schwartz and said ‘We should do Trevor Goes To Hollywood.’”
Then the joke got legs, and a car. “The 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’s how it began.” And thus this atypical Marvel Universe show was born.
EP Destin Daniel Cretton says it all started to come together when he found out there was a similar project in the works. “Then 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’s when Andrew [Guest, EP] came in and helped us create the real vibe of the show.”
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The show revolves around struggling actor Simon Williams (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) who has a chance meeting with Slattery which leads to his dream role in the remake of ‘Wonder Man.’ But he has to hide his super abilities due to the Hollywood “Doorman Clause” which states that no one with supernatural abilities can work in film and tv.
Yahya calls working with Sir Ben Kingsley a ‘labor of respect.’ Sharing what he learned from working with the legendary Academy Award winner, “Sir Ben told me early on, he said ‘look the time outside of action and cut is not for us it’s 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.”
But it wasn’t smooth sailing for this first season. Executive Producer Andrew Guest shares that they were almost half way through the production when the strike hit, and it wasn’t looking good for the future of Wonder Man. “This was a risk creatively for Marvel and I think it was one they reexamined during the strike. It’s been this underground project that the people at Marvel believed in.”
Check back Monday for the panel video.
