Work on Marvel’s “What If…?” animated series for Disney+ continues despite the unprecedented public health emergency. According to animation supervising director Stephen Franck, the production has benefited from the fact that animation is a skill and art form you generally do in isolation, which makes it perfect for finishing work from home.
Franck spoke with Newsarama about his work on the Marvel animated series.
“I normally split my day between my home studio and the Disney lot for dailies and reviews, but now we’re just doing it all remotely. From what I hear across town, animation has been able to keep the shows in production with everyone safely working from home. Kudos to the studios for pivoting so fast to remote work. It all happened literally within days.”
“Unfortunately I’m also hearing about some projects in development or with more distant release dates being put on hiatus, but a fair number of people in animation are still at work from the safety of their home, which we are all grateful for.”
While he wasn’t able to share any new details about the series, Franck is excited about showing it to fans on schedule.
What we do know is that Jeffrey Wright will voice the series narrator as a character called The Watcher. Each episode is a ‘What if’ spin on a Marvel Cinematic Universe character. Actors from the MCU films will provide the voice for the animated version of their characters too.
Fan favorites Peggy Carter and Steve Rogers are the subject of the first episode which asks, what if Peggy Carter became a British super soldier thanks to the super serum and Howard Stark created an iron man prototype suit for the scrawny, but brave, Steve Rogers? Intriguing.
The first episode of the 10 episode debut season is expected to drop in mid-2021 and a second season has already been announced.
There are a lot of great Marvel Studios shows coming to Disney+, but this one is rising to the top of my most anticipated.