While news has been sparse on Marvel’s New Warriors television series, comic book writer Fabian Nicieza has opened up to SyFy Wire about his conversations with those involved with the series and what they’ll need to ensure it succeeds like the original comic.
The series, which was originally ordered straight to series as Freeform, is currently in search of a home despite the pilot reportedly testing “through the roof.” Unfortunately, with the series still on the hunt for a home, details surrounding the project remain unknown outside of it being a half-hour comedy. According to scribe Fabian Nicieza, though, the series, which is a far cry from his 75-issue run, the series can be best described as a “half-hour dramedy, comedy docu-comedy show” that focuses on a group of 20-somethings living together in a house pretending to be superheroes.
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Nicieza also explained what it’ll take for the series to endure, explaining that the core of the original series was that “strident, passionate, and relatively immature” perspective of the young heroes. As he explains, there needs to be a sense of anger and passion driving them to seek change in the world.
What I think is the core underlying ethos of New Warriors that made my run so successful and that others struggled with was the strident, passionate, and relatively immature perspective the young bring to seek change in the world. There has to be an element of anger and passion to that, which infused the original series. There also has to be an element of positive aspiration to it, too, because they’re supposed to be good people who just don’t know enough about the world yet. I hope they use those elements in the TV show, because then, to me, it’s the brand of New Warriors. If they don’t, it will be other iterations that Marvel published, and there’s a reason those didn’t succeed: because it lacked the core DNA.
Of course, one of the biggest changes between the comics and the television series is the line-up, which will see fan-favorite Squirrel Girl take the lead. While both Speedball and Night Thrasher were included in the new line-up, the series opted to leave out a character like Firestar. The reasoning behind this is reasonable, of course, as Nicieza even notes the series has to be conscious of its visual effects budget and Firestar would have easily ate up a good portion of said budget.
I think that frankly, the special effects budget has to be incredibly limited for a half-hour show on Freeform, so they’re using a lot of characters who don’t need to have a heavy VFX budget behind them. I think Firestar would be 90% special effects if she’s using her powers.
Best picture #newwarriors pic.twitter.com/1mQ9BiQOOh
— kevinbiegel (@kbiegel) March 22, 2018
Marvel’s New Warriors television series may not have a home currently, but that doesn’t mean showrunner Kevin Biegel hasn’t been hard at work on the series behind in the scenes. In fact, Biegel has repeatedly shared photos of him alongside the New Warriors cast, including the above photo from just last week. Like with the recently cancelled animated Deadpool series, it’s entirely possible New Warriors will end up on Disney’s streaming service which is set to launch sometime in 2019.
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New Warriors centers on six young heroes learning to cope with their abilities in a world where bad guys can be as terrifying as bad dates. The 10-episode series stars Milana Vayntrub as Squirrel Girl, Derek Theler as Mister Immortal, Jeremy Tardy as Night Thrasher, Calum Worthy as Speedball, Matthew Moy as Microbe and Kate Comer as Debrii.