This fall, it seems like Marvel Studios is playing Oprah. Freeform gets a Marvel series! Netflix gets a Marvel series! Even Hulu is getting a Marvel series!
But while some of the megastudio's forays into TV seem like watered-down versions of the tentpole films that fans flock to, Hulu's release, Runaways, is taking a decidedly more down-to-earth look at the Marvel Universe.
Deadline reports that having showrunners Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage at the helm means that the show is definitely more glossy soap than CGI-laden blockbuster.
During a Television Critics Association panel, Schwartz and Savage — names you'll recognize from Gossip Girl and The O.C. — explained that Runaways isn't about creating a group of heroes just to have them inhabit the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe. Instead, Schwartz said that the show is more of a way to comment on current events through a Marvel lens.
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"We didn’t view it as a superhero show," Schwartz said. "We viewed it as a coming-of-age drama, family show inside Marvel."
Our first look at the main characters in Hulu's THE RUNAWAYS series! pic.twitter.com/mHH1ORvD0b
— MCU News & Tweets (@MCU_Tweets) May 3, 2017
The show revolves around a group of Brentwood teens that discover their parents are all in a villainous cult. Together, the ragtag group realizes that their authority figures don't necessarily have good intentions. Mash that up with teenage angst, which is a Schwartz and Savage specialty, and the show is about as far as it gets from the save-the-world gravitas of the Avengers films.
"When you're a teenager, everything feels like life and death," Schwartz said during the panel. "And the stakes in this story really felt like that."
Of course, throwing some superpowers into that along with the problems that arise when a group of teens gets together will make for a very different type of drama.
For fans of the original comic, there's no mention of Old Lace, the dinosaur that's part of one character's abilities. Fingers crossed that Schwartz and Savage didn't eliminate that character altogether, because there is a very evident lack of dinosaurs on today's selection of primetime soaps. Viewers will have to wait until November 21 to see just how the gang comes together and whether or not Old Lace has a cameo.
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