EXCLUSIVE: ABC has ordered a pilot for S.H.I.E.L.D, a live-action series from The Avengers writer-director Joss Whedon, Marvel TV and ABC Studios. The project is based on Marvel’s peacekeeping organization S.H.I.E.L.D (which stands for Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate or Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division) found in both the Marvel comic book and feature film universes, including the blockbuster 2012 movie The Avengers, in which S.H.I.E.L.D director Nick Fury, recruits Iron Man, Captain America, the Hulk, and Thor to stop Thor’s adoptive brother Loki from subjugating Earth.
S.H.I.E.L.D. will be written by Whedon and frequent collaborators, his brother Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen. Joss Whedon also is set to direct the pilot, schedule permitting. Production on the pilot, which marks the first live-action Marvel TV project to get a green light, will start immediately. Joss Whedon, Jed Whedon and Tancharoen executive produce with Jeffrey Bell and Marvel TV’s Jeph Loeb.
Related: ABC And Marvel Eying ‘Avengers’-Themed TV Series
The project had been in the works at Marvel TV and ABC Studios for some time. Earlier this month, Disney CEO Bob Iger announced that it had signed an exclusive film and TV deal with Joss Whedon, which included him writing and directing The Avengers sequel and develop a live-action series for Marvel TV and ABC, both owned by Disney.
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This marks a return to series television for Joss Whedon, creator of cult favorites Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Firefly and Dollhouse. Husband and wife writing duo Jed Whedon and Tancharoen co-penned with Joss Whedon Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog and also have worked on Dollhouse and Spartacus. In addition to S.H.I.E.L.D, Marvel TV has a couple of other projects in development at ABC Studios, including a Hulk series.
How is Whedon going to run this show and direct The Avengers? Or is he basically pulling a JJ Abrams in that he’ll direct and write the pilot and then hand it over to the other people.
More importantly, how can you have SHIELD without Nick Fury??!!!!
no no no no no no no. The most important question to ask is “what about Coulson”?
they could have Hill run it
To be fair, he’s still got a little while to go before Avengers 2 really starts work. They have to get through Thor 2, Iron Man 3, and Captain America 2 first. I’m sure he’s doing some work on it, but not full-time. And he’ll direct ‘as his schedule permits’, so when he has some free time and the desire, he’ll pop in to do so. But I’m pretty sure he can keep the show running even while he’s doing films. He managed to keep several shows and a few comics running at the same time a few years back.
I’m pretty sure that will be Jeffery Bell’s role; to run the show day-to-day as he did for a while on Whedon’s ANGEL.
Easy, the next Avengers movie is at least 3 or 4 years out.
They’re already filming the next iron man and a new Thor is in the works. I don’t doubt we’re in for a cycle of solo movies than avengers.
Exciting news! So happy for Joss, he is such a classy genius.
Xander and Andrew are freaking out right now.
So much win for this comment!
Andrew is not a real nerd. He said he had seen all the episodes of Doctor Who. At the time of broadcast 109 were missing from the archives and had been since before Andrew was born.
Spike on the other hand probably has seen all the episodes of Doctor Who. Why else would he refer to himself as The Doctor?
seaucdfhsiofhjc YES
oh god, this is magical.
talk abut Marvel overload. they need to relax with all this Avengers crap
Not at all. It gonna be great to have a solid comic book based show on TV again, and Whedon is just the guy to pull it off.
MARIA HILL MARIA HILL MARIA HILL MARIA HILL MARIA HILL MARIA HILL MARIA HILLLLLLLLLLLLL
My nerd boner just went from 6 to Threat Level Midnight.
Kudos on getting the comics acronym right! However this show is going to be in the film continuity so it will be the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division instead.
Hollywood types…they got S.H.I.E.L.D. meaning wrong. In the Avengers cartoon and Marvel movies (which show is based on) it stands for Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division, not Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate
NERD, you’ve got to remember that the info given to press is from Marvel. SHIELD will have much more influence from the comic history that spans over 40 years than the MCU which spans, as far as SHIELD is concerned, what, 6 years? I believe they are also moving away from the “Homeland” designation as SHIELD is international in its’ scope.
Sam Jackson does Mace Windu’s voice on Clone Wars, I wonder if he’d agree to play Fury in at least a few eppys.
No he doesn’t.
(just in the “movie”, not the proper series)
If anyone can make it work for TV, it’s Joss.
The network not being Fox with help with the series too…
This will be awesome if they manage to work around not having Maria Hill, Natasha Romanoff (Widow) and Clint Barton (Hawkeye) unless they somehow manage to convince Cobie to dedicate herself to another TV show and convince Jeremy and Scarlett that a tv show is a good choice for their careers.
I hope this works out. I really do. I can’t wait.
It they want Smulders, it may force the issue on CBS and 20th Century Fox to decide on whether this is the last season of How I Met Your Mother.
Actually, it looks like they are going to focus on other characters within the the series, Luke Cage and Iron Fist for example, instead of focusing on the big names we all know – possibly with Cap as the leader – with Stark showing up when needed, Banner either helping or rampaging as the plot demands, Thor showing up to deal with threats from Asgard, etc. The question then is, what about Black Widow and Hawkeye, both of whom are standard parts of the team?
You guys are talking about Avengers, not SHIELD. SHIELD has it’s own cast of characters dating back to 1968. The best film depiction of them is in “Captain America,” where the Howling Commandos are actually Nick Fury’s band of brothers in the comics. Nick Fury Sr., Nick Fury Jr., Countess Valentina de Allegro, Clay Quartermain, Jimmy Woo, Alexander Godwin Pierce, Jimmy Sitwell…the list goes on of bona fide SHIELD agents. Agent 13, aka Sharon Carter (Captain America’s girlfriend) is as formidable as Black Widow, and frankly, more integrated into SHIELD than she is. I believe this will be the modern version of “Mission: Impossible,” with cameos from Marvel characters and superhuman foes.
Cameos from them, please!
Best. Comment. Ever.
Can’t wait for next fall :)
Congrats to all involved!
Great News. Marvel continues to take calculated risks that seem to pay off; DC?
SHIELD means Super Happy Investment Empowering Lethargic Disney
I would hardly call dollhouse a cult favorite lol. And wow talk about nepotism hiring. I’m sure Marissa will write herself a nice role too. Man what would some people do if they couldn’t ride the coattails of whedon… andrew lol. Remember when you didn’t even know who whedon was … Like 5 years ago. Buffy what? Wonder if you even bothered to watch it before writing.
FYI: Maurissa Tancharoen is married to Jed Whedon.
This would be perfect, except for the fact it’s going to be on ABC. Putting a show aimed at men on ABC is pretty much asking for it to be cancelled. Get it onto cable quick, Joss!
Whoa, who said anything about it being a show aimed at men? How incredibly sexist of you to think women won’t enjoy a series like this, especially when it’s coming from the likes of Joss Whedon. You don’t think Firefly and Avengers were aimed at men, do you?
Who is to say it will be aimed at men? Women read comics and women will watch the show. The Avengers movie also added a whole slew of females to the comics fandom.
Saying that it will be “geared towards men” is actually rather sexist in this day and age.
The reason it’s going on ABC is because Disney has the rights to Marvel and ABC is owned by Disney. So the only way it would be able to come on television, would be on ABC.
um…Disney owns the rights to abc or something. Pretty sure that’s the reason.
I just want him to finish doctor horrible 2 -.-
S.H.I.E.L.D. = Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division (in the new movie universe)
this article was spot on until it called Dollhouse a fan favorite
Cobie Smulders should be headlining this show as Maria Hill. Full stop.
This really is the point where Fox and CBS need to take the hint, get out of the way and end How I Met Your Mother sooner rather than later. Stringing it out for an additional season beyond this one just takes it into the Office-Land of shows that went on for waaaay too long.
I’ll say this for Mother: it may have had a couple of meh seasons, and outside a few episodes never achieved the same great heights as The Office consistently reached in its earlier seasons, but it’s one of the few shows that has aged quite well (ignoring the whole mother question). The latest season of Mother was miles ahead of, say, the latest seasons of Office or 30 Rock.
No argument there, but as with House it is better to let it go out with a bang while it is still a good show than to let it wither and die as people stop caring.
I like Cobie but I’m not sure she captures Maria’s anger and drive. This is a woman with the stones to yell back at Tony Stark and Nick Fury, remember, not Neil Patrick Harris.
On the bright side, ABC has an exciting and original plan to air the series out of sequence to pique audience interest….
Not sure this is a good idea.
While Joss is a very talented TV writer/producer, the SHIELD elements were easily the weakest part of “the Avengers” (to say nothing of Iron Man 2).
Agreed. Also, I think it would be tricky because so far in the movieverse and most of the comics, we only see SHIELD in relation to superheroes. This is a show that might have to rely on guest appearances to keep from being repetitive and boring.
I’m also apprehensive that it may turn out like Firefly, with memorable characters but somewhat lacking plots for the viewerbase it would be trying to attract.
I think all the good SHIELD parts of the film were cut.
You need to expand your scope. SHIELD is not limited to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It has a VERY deep and storied mythos in comics, since before you were alive, probably (1968). Do your homework!! SHIELD is NOT from the Avengers!!
One thing struck me when reading this article. The “first live-action Marvel TV project” was ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ which premiered in 1977. The most recent live-action Marvel TV project before ‘S.H.I.E.L.D.’ was ‘The Death of the Incredible Hulk’ in 1990.
So, yeah, it’s been a while, but ‘S.H.I.E.L.D.’ isn’t the first. The first this millennium, maybe.
No, that would be “live-action TV projects based on Marvel properties”, that Marvel licensed to other companies (the most recent of which would be the Blade tv show in 2006, btw).
Marvel TV is a division of Marvel Studios, founded a few years ago to develop TV projects “in-house”. It has been developing the Hulk show for a while now, and its subsidiary Marvel Animation has successfully produced several animated shows, but the “first live-action Marvel TV project to be greenlighted” (that is, to have a network say “we are interested in that, please go produce something for us”) would be, yes, S.H.I.E.L.D.
? Marvel TV is a “PRODUCTION COMPANY” so yes it is the first “Marvel TV” project. lol
I have to correct you on that one Russell – Fox was running with a series of tv movies based on Marvel properties in the mid nineties: Generation X and Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (with David Hasselhoff, surely no one has forgotten that crap fest). There was supposed to a Black Widow that tied into the Nick Fury one but, as one could tell, the ratings were dismal enough to axe it.
AND if you really want to get technical – don’t forget those independent Canadian productions of Night Man and Mutant X in the late nineties and early 00’s- although they didn’t have much connection to their comic book counterparts.
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Coat
Actually, the Hoff starred in the Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD live-action TV-movie for FOX back in 1998.
The first Marvel live-action TV project to get a green light? Uhh… Incredible Hulk, anybody? Spider-Man, Dr. Strange? Nick Fury? Captain America? They’ve been mostly terrible, but Marvel has had a whole bunch of live action TV movies and shows over the years.
Those may have been series “based on” Marvel comics characters, but I think what they mean is it will be the first series “produced by” Marvel. Just like the X-Men and Fantastic Four are produced by Fox, and Spiderman by Sony, when everyone of them are Marvel comics.
Marvel TV as a production company not a TV show based on Marvel characters.
Casey is right; they are referring to Marvel itself producing a television show – not situations where they havd previously licensed their characters out to other studios. It has only been a few years since Marvel made the wise decision to set up their own film production studio and start producing their own movies, beginning with Iron Man.