Phase 7 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is taking on a somewhat curious form. Marvel’s House of Ideas has been, to a degree, canceling TV projects they had been developing for a while, but they don’t seem to abandon the terrain entirely. To the surprise of many, Marvel itself has announced its upcoming exclusive series for Disney+, though it remains shrouded in mystery: ‘Zodiac’.
During New York Comic-Con, the project was revealed with the logo you see at the top of the article header. There aren’t many official details at the moment: it has been specified that it will be a thriller that will delve into Marvel’s deepest secrets, but no cast member has been announced nor which Marvel licenses might be involved. Filming will begin in London next spring, and the projected release date is 2028.
What is Zodiac?
The executive producer of Marvel Television, Brad Winderbaum, has been clear in his statements: there are no casting announcements because they would be spoilers. He is aware that the secrecy will not stay in the air for long once filming begins, and that many of the secrets are already present in the logo. For now, two icons stand out in it and invite our imagination to roam: Iron Man’s Arc reactor and SHIELD’s Falcon.
That could mean a thousand different things. It could be Marvel’s way of reviving ‘Armor Wars’, the canceled series that was set to star Don Cheadle and would rethink Tony Stark’s legacy after the end of ‘Avengers: Endgame’. It could also signal the return of the SHIELD organization and a light reboot for ‘Agents of SHIELD’, which ran for seven seasons on ABC over seven years.
Original Material
There isn’t much to mine from the comics regarding the Zodiac name. There was a villain in 2009 who bore the name and faced the ‘Thunderbolts’ and the ‘Moon Knight’, and as a group of supervillains there have been several versions that have taken the name and clashed with various Avengers incarnations, but with few significant appearances. Neither case seems to carry enough weight to headline a full series.
We’ll have to keep an eye on the casting lineup to see which adaptation Marvel Studios is pursuing, or if they’ll surprise us with something entirely new that doesn’t draw from the comics as has happened so far.
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