The upcoming Season 2 of Marvel’s What If…? will reportedly feature an episode that centers on the alternate-universe story of Marvel 1602. The recent Comic-Con International became the perfect time for Neil Gaiman to remind the fans that he actually tried to get a full 1602 TV show made, but was rejected by the management.
Marvel 1602, known in-story as Earth-311, was a 2003 miniseries by Andy Kubert and Neil Gaiman, which reimagined the Marvel Comics characters as if they existed during the Elizabethan era. The Marvel 1602 series, which featured characters like the X-Men, Daredevil, Nick Fury, and Spider-Man ended up becoming a hit, resulting in numerous sequels since it was released.
Back in 2012, the president of Marvel Studios, Kevin Feige, was asked about the idea of doing an adaptation of Marvel 1602.
"Something like 1602 I think would be really cool to do at sometime down the line. I love it. It is spectacular," Feige said back then. "But the key to it, the fun of it, is that you need to know those characters very well. You need to know each and every one of those characters and who their present-day reincarnations are in order to enjoy and understand and appreciate how Neil was able to reinvent them and do that period spin on them for 1602. If you don't know them yet and if they haven't had their own stories yet, I don't think it would be as much fun. If you don't know them well and you haven't been introduced to them in a similar medium in their traditional environments, plucking them out of that won't seem as unique or different....You need the audience, or the movie-going public to have a great understanding of who they are before you alter it like that."
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Marvel 1602 is one of the most popular alternate universes of Marvel, and one of only a few stories that would make sense with the characters already introduced in the MCU. Something like the Age of Apocalypse story, although very well-known with a lot of comic book fans, would require some X-Men worldbuilding in the MCU before anything could be done about it.
Marvel’s What If…? is set to be released in early 2023 on Disney+.
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