Marvel’s Inhumans will be a TV show rather than a movie - what does this mean for the MCU?

Despite having been announced as the final movie in Phase 3 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it was recently revealed that Inhumans will now be a television miniseries, rather than a film. Marvel’s Inhumans is set to focus on “a race of superhumans with diverse and singularly unique powers” – more specifically, though, it’ll be characters such as Black Bolt and the Royal Family who appear in this new TV show.

While we don’t know a lot about the show so far, one thing is likely: we won’t see Vin Diesel play Black Bolt. It’s a role he’s been associated with for a long time, often dancing around the subject of whether or not he’d be playing the imposing hero, but it now seems unlikely that he’ll take the role. As James Gunn recently pointed out, signing up for a TV show means that Vin Diesel would have to take a pretty hefty pay cut – while we do live in a world where television holds a much higher prestige than it once did, with Hollywood stars being far more inclined to do television than they once were, it’s still early days as to whether or not this will prove to be the case for Vin Diesel.

On the flip side, though, what does seem more likely by virtue of this change is something no one really expected to see: crossover between Inhumans and Agents of SHIELD. Over the past few years, the ABC series Agents of SHIELD has dealt a lot with the Inhumans; indeed, the main character Daisy Johnson is an Inhuman. A lot of people were hopeful about seeing her character, or indeed others from Agents of SHIELD, appearing in the Inhumans movie – something which was unlikely then, but seems far more possible now that Inhumans will be an ABC television series.

Interestingly, the series is also going to form part of an unprecedented distribution deal, as IMAX will partially fund the venture – with the first two episodes having an exclusive premier in select IMAX cinemas.

A recent press release gave these details:

It’s this, then, that marks the most interesting possibility for the MCU – it’s an unprecedented deal which hints at the potential for a more expansive multi-media experience. The MCU was already an innovative experiment, but it’s clearly a successful one – could this change signify attempts to further push the boundaries? Marvel’s Inhumans is set to launch a storyline that begins in cinemas, but concludes on the television; what this might mean for both the MCU, and indeed storytelling at large, is a fascinating prospect to consider.

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