Marvel's Mystery Disney Plus Show Codenamed "Slumber Party" May Be a New Mutants Series

There has been a wide variety of news regarding Marvel television over the last month and a half, and it all started when Marvel Studios cancelled season 2 of Wonder Man only months after greenlighting it. Now there is a fresh follow-up scoop from Charles Murphy at Murphy's Multiverse pointing to a secret live-action Disney Plus production, and with the added details he released, it is sizing up to be a big one.

The story really began with Hollywood trades and industry insiders reporting a strong pivot at Marvel television away from live-action and toward animation, simply because live-action shows are expensive and reportedly were not driving Disney Plus subscriptions. That fits a pattern of sweeping cutbacks across almost every division at Disney over the last year. Reportedly, Marvel Studios had layoffs across nearly every department, including internal visual development, where senior graphic design artists who had been with the company since the beginning of the MCU were let go, alongside broader cuts to film, television, comics, finance, and legal.

Said out loud, it is not a surprise that Wonder Man season 2 got cancelled and that Marvel reportedly might move away from live-action entirely. But only a week or two after that, word started coming out that there were secret productions going into pre-development under a couple of different production LLCs, and these were, in fact, live-action television shows being made for Marvel Studios and Disney Plus.

Charles Murphy's Scoop Reveals a Mystery Project Codenamed "Slumber Party"

According to Charles Murphy at Murphy's Multiverse, there is a mystery Marvel streaming project filed under a production company that has been approved to begin production under the working title Slumber Party. Murphy added, "What's really crazy is that additionally, in light of them cancelling a already green lit season 2 of Wonderman, they are keeping their options open to develop future seasons of this exact same series."

That detail stands out to me. If Marvel Studios in this new era of pulling back from live-action is already leaving its options open for future seasons of a show that has not even been shot yet, that has to mean it works into a bigger plan for the studio. If they are willing to commit to a first season with future seasons already being discussed, that tells me they are looking at this as a long-term project worth the investment, not a quick one-off.

Why "Slumber Party" Points to the New Mutants

From other industry insiders and coverage I've done over the last month, I've heard that Marvel Studios may look to work some of its X-Men adjacent properties into television shows on Disney Plus. Knowing we are headed into the Mutant Saga, which Kevin Feige has called it that himself, I'd be totally surprised if they didn't do this. Slumber Party happens to be the specific title of New Mutants number 21, and in my opinion the New Mutants are exactly the type of X-Men adjacent team that would work on Disney Plus.

My own take is that these shows should focus on building up origin stories for characters, but Marvel has already said out loud that it wants an indelible line between its television shows and the theatrical films, because it doesn't want TV viewers to feel like they have to do homework, and it doesn't want theatrical audiences who skip the Disney Plus shows to feel lost on major character development. There is also the matter of paying huge contract prices for actors under theatrical only deals, only for them to show up in a Disney Plus show that, as already reported, has not translated to the bottom line.

That is why I don't think we get a Cyclops show, a Storm show, a Beast show, or an Iceman show. It is more likely they do an adjacent X-Men team instead. There are other options like X-Force or X-Factor, but with the specific name Slumber Party, and with the X-Men already being cast much younger, I can see them casting a much younger New Mutants team for the same reason, so the actors don't age out of the roles over the next twenty years the way some older depictions of these characters have in the past.

A show like this could run multiple seasons set in the X-Men world, pushing the mutant story forward without being directly tied to the films, and without requiring homework between the two. Deadpool's next movie might already be doing something similar, and a Disney Plus New Mutants series would let Marvel control the budget and cast relatively unknown actors, the same way it has approached the X-Men films, while still keeping the story adjacent to the bigger saga.

Marvel Studios Still Seems Unsure of Its Own Direction

Quite frankly, Marvel Studios is still giving me the vibe that it's unsure of the way forward. After crossing the finish line with Avengers: Endgame, it's obvious they went too wide, chose the wrong franchises, and didn't revisit the same point of view characters enough, and rebooting into new characters completely disconnected from that ending crossover event alienated fans. That is part of why this time Doomsday is being built as a closure movie and Secret Wars as the reboot, so that by the time we reach the X-Men film we will have already seen Jean Grey at least twice and possibly other new characters introduced along the way.

I'd love to point to that plan as evidence Marvel Studios has learned to pace itself, taking a breath next year with only Deadpool and Wolverine before pivoting from Kang to Doctor Doom. But then you watch them greenlight a second season of Wonder Man only to cancel it months later, and it undercuts that read. As I put it, "basically they don't exactly know what they're doing. They're just sort of figuring it out as they go along," which incidentally parallels exactly what they've been doing with the movies, starting and stopping without a full script the whole way through.

What This Could Mean Heading Into Doomsday and Secret Wars

I think Marvel Studios still has a real chance to capitalize on the momentum coming out of Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Doomsday is already tracking to be the biggest movie of the year, possibly even outpacing Brand New Day, and if Avengers: Endgame Encore reignites people's imagination the way it's hoping to, even though I don't think that's totally necessary, that only adds to the momentum.

If Doomsday is genuinely good and Secret Wars sticks the landing, all the pressure will fall on the X-Men film, since it will be the first MCU movie out of the gate coming in May, right after Secret Wars. That's exactly why I like the idea of mutant adjacent characters getting their own Disney Plus show that doesn't carry the same pressure as the X-Men movie or a Deadpool and X-Force movie, while still keeping us firmly in that world. New Mutants feels like the perfect project to do that.

If it were up to you, what mutant adjacent characters or projects would you greenlight for multiple seasons on Disney Plus?