Lord & Miller Tease New Live-Action Marvel Shows, Aiming For Something Unprecedented On TV

Phil Lord and Chris Miller, two of the most innovative, creative minds in Hollywood, just signed a first-look deal with Universal Pictures to make movies at that studio. But the duo's TV output is going through a separate deal they have at Sony Pictures Television, and in a new interview from the Television Critics Association press tour today, Miller teased their upcoming Marvel TV projects and revealed something we hadn't heard before.

Lord and Miller (21 Jump Street, The LEGO Movie, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) have built their entire careers on putting fascinating twists on stories which often sound pretty iffy on paper, but now they're going to be working on something that actually sounds like a home run from the start. Miller told Deadline, "We are developing a handful of live-action shows using Sony's Marvel characters, of which there are like 900 characters. We're figuring out a way to develop the shows so that each are their own unique experience but are also related."

The live-action aspect of this equation is new. Back in April, when they first signed their deal with Sony Pictures TV, we knew they were developing Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse TV spin-offs, but we assumed those would be animated. Hell, they still might be – these live-action Marvel shows could be completely separate. Miller wouldn't spill too many more details, but he did tease that he wants this series of interconnected yet standalone shows to do something unprecedented:

"We've been talking to a lot of potential teammates for trying to do something not like anything else that's been done on television. It'll be a little while before it all comes together and is on the air, but I think it is going to be something really special. Hopefully we'll know in the next few months where it'll be and what the schedule will be."

Miller refused to indicate whether one or more of these projects might go to a streamer like Netflix, but since there have been several interconnected superhero universes on television before, I have to wonder if what he's talking about here involves the destinations for these shows: could he be teasing a series of shows that line up across different platforms? A Netflix show over here, a Hulu show over here, a Disney+ show over there, all of which operate independently but potentially cross over? We'll bring you more info as soon as we hear it.