THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER 

THE MCU’S ODD COUPLE GET THEIR OWN DISNEY+ SERIES TO EXPLORE WHO’LL BE THE NEXT CAPTAIN AMERICA IN

WORDS: TARA BENNETT

IF THERE’S ONE THING you can be certain about with Marvel Studios, it’s that it’s always 10 steps ahead of its audience. That’s not easy considering that it has made six of the 20 biggest-grossing films ever, its fandom includes more than 30 million social media followers, and it has spawned a cottage industry revolving around trying to unearth spoilers about forthcoming titles.

Yet it continues to keep most of its secrets locked down, in order to surprise and delight. Case in point: when Kevin Feige, President of Marvel Studios, announced at San Diego Comic-Con 2019 the slate for Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe – including, for the first time, series-based storytelling to air exclusively on Disney+ – the studio had already been developing all of it since 2018, including WandaVision and The Falcon And The Winter Soldier.

Knowing the value of their wide range of supporting Avengers characters, Feige and the creatives at Marvel Studios saw Disney+ as an opportunity to finally give focused attention to the stories the films haven’t been able to dig into. The Falcon And The Winter Soldier, a six-part one-off series, will honour a deeper exploration of the baton pass from the end of Avengers: Endgame – where Old Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) gives his Captain America shield to Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) and a rehabilitated Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) – and what those two men do with it next.

CASTING THE SPELLMAN 

Initially developed by Captain America: Winter Soldier and Captain America: Civil War executive producer Nate Moore and his co-executive producer Zoie Nagelhout, the series was always envisioned as a two-hander in which Sam and Bucky are given the space to explore who they are – and who they want to be – without Steve Rogers directly influencing their destinies.

Under a veil of secrecy, Marvel Studios approached writers. Some were already on their radar – like Malcolm Spellman, who’d previously met Moore about a potential Deathlok script that never happened. “I won’t approach any project unless I feel like I have a connection to it. When this one came up, I went for it,” Spellman says enthusiastically, via a Zoom call from his LA office. With his 20 years of experience in film and television with shows like Empire, and his love for the characters, he knew he was uniquely positioned for the challenge.

“They wanted to do a buddy two-hander, and that’s one of the things I came to Hollywood to write. I love them on all spectrums. And [Marvel Studios] can smell out the BS very quickly,” Spellman chuckles. “They knew that I got the [writing] samples, right? But then most importantly, having a black man confront whether or not to take on the mantle of that shield was why I pushed so hard to get it.”