Marvel is making ‘multiple’ animated shows for Disney Plus

What If…?

is the fourth Marvel show to debut on Disney Plus in 2021, but it’s the studio’s first animated series. Given its premise, it would have been virtually impossible to make the live-action version of the show. In What If…?, Marvel reimagines the most iconic storylines of the MCU. What if Peggy Carter took the super-solider serum instead of Steve Rogers? What if Killmonger rescued Tony Stark from the Ten Rings? And what if your favorite superheroes turned into zombies? Gathering the huge cast to film these scenes would have been impossible, which is why animation was the right choice. But this is just the beginning for Marvel animated shows.

More Marvel animated shows are in the works

Earlier this week, Variety had a chance to speak with What If…? executive producer Brad Winderbaum. He said that Marvel already has “multiple” other animated shows “in various phases of development” for Disney Plus. In addition to What If…? season 2 and the I Am Groot animated shorts, there are shows in the works that have yet to be announced. The report also reveals that Marvel Studios doesn’t have any plans to make full-length animated features. At least not yet.

“We realized that there’s a lot of cool avenues you can explore with animation,” Winderbaum said. “Any project that we create is going to be something that needs to be animated in order for the story to be told. There’s very little desire to take a piece of IP that’s popular because we’re coming out with a movie and just make an animated show about it. We’re not going to do that.”

The fact What If…? won’t be Marvel’s last animated show isn’t especially surprising. But there were a few interesting revelations sprinkled throughout the interview. For one, Winderbaum seemed open to the idea of Marvel working with either Pixar or Walt Disney Animation Studios on future projects. “It’s something that we’d be open to under the right circumstances,” he said.

Winderbaum also addressed the drama surrounding Dave Bautista’s apparent snubbing. When a fan asked Bautista why he didn’t voice his character Drax in What If…?, the actor claimed that he’d never been asked to participate. Here’s the tweet from earlier this month:

Let’s start with I was never asked. https://t.co/HwrnMrEajh

— Vaxxed AF! #TeamPfizer Poor Kid Chasing Dreams. (@DaveBautista) August 2, 2021

“I saw that, too,” Winderbaum told Variety. “It’s my understanding that everybody was asked in some way, shape or form, either through their agents or directly. I don’t know really what happened behind the scenes there, but certainly, we would have loved for him to be in the show. So there’s probably some miscommunication somewhere.”

New episodes of What If…? will debut on Disney Plus every Wednesday for the next eight weeks.