Marvel’s 91% RT Show Renewed For Season 2 Began As “A Joke Pitch”

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The popular Marvel series Wonder Man has been picked up for a second season, but it surprisingly started as a casual idea—almost a joke—among the creators.

Wonder Man centers around actor Simon Williams (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) who is trying to keep his superpowers a secret while chasing his big break in Hollywood. He unexpectedly becomes friends with another actor, Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley), along the way. The show has received very positive reviews, earning a 91% rating from critics and an 87% audience score, and is being praised as a welcome change of pace from typical superhero franchises.

During a recent TV panel with Deadline, Destin Daniel Cretton, the creator and executive producer of Wonder Man, shared that the idea for featuring Trevor Slattery originated as a joke on the set of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Producer Jonathan Schwartz playfully expanded on this joke by working with the art department to design a poster for a potential Trevor Slattery Hollywood spinoff. This concept eventually blended with the developing Wonder Man series, ultimately becoming the show now available on Disney+. You can find Cretton’s full comments below.

The idea came to me while filming Shang-Chi. I really enjoyed working with Sir Ben Kingsley as Trevor Slattery, and I’ve always thought his character was fantastic but not used enough in the movies. I jokingly suggested to our producer, Jonathan Schwartz, that we make a movie called “Trevor Goes To Hollywood.”

The idea for the show really took off when [Schwartz] jokingly created a poster with our art department featuring Trevor heading to Hollywood in a convertible, styled like something from the 1980s. Seeing it, I immediately knew we had to make this show a reality, and that’s how it all started.

While we were presenting our show idea, we learned that a Wonder Man series was also in development, exploring a similar concept within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. These two projects overlapped, and that’s when Andrew Guest, an executive producer, joined us to help define the show’s unique tone and atmosphere.

Wonder Man was created when Disney+ was actively producing a lot of Marvel shows, giving even less popular characters their own series. This allowed Trevor Slattery, who initially tricked audiences as a villain in Iron Man 3 and later appeared as a funny supporting character in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, to star in his own spinoff show.

Marvel has reduced the number of new shows coming to Disney+. Combined with the unusual nature of the Wonder Man series and the 2023 strikes by actors and writers, the show faced potential cancellation. According to creator and executive producer Andrew Guest, Wonder Man was a creative risk for Marvel, and its future was reconsidered during the strikes. He describes it as a project that Marvel staff quietly supported.

I have to admit, I didn’t expect much when this series first started – it almost felt like a fun little experiment. But it’s become one of my favorite Marvel shows! What’s even more amazing is it’s only the third live-action Marvel series on Disney+ to get renewed for a second season. Only Loki – which was always planned to have two seasons – and Daredevil: Born Again have done that before. It’s worth noting that both of those shows already had a huge fanbase, and Daredevil also had those earlier seasons on Netflix, which definitely helped!

While Trevor was already a known character, Wonder Man was a much bigger question mark. Luckily, the show’s positive reviews and high viewership prove the initial concept and creative direction were successful. The unexpected friendship between Simon and Trevor will continue in future seasons, and it seems Agent Cleary and the Department of Damage Control will likely remain involved in the story as well.

With Marvel shifting how it makes TV shows, it’s becoming increasingly rare for a project like Wonder Man – especially one that started as a playful idea – to get made into a full series. This makes the show stand out even more, particularly as it continues to develop its unusual storyline in its second season.

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2026-04-26 18:58