Echo, the first of 2024's upcoming Marvel TV shows, is kicking off the new year with a little something new strategy-wise. Not only will the series starring Alaqua Cox’s Maya Lopez (previously seen on Hawkeye) lean into a mature rating for the first time in the MCU, but every episode of the season is set to be in Marvel fans’ hands at once. Echo producer Brad Winderbaum shared with CinemaBlend why Echo was the right title to be Marvel Studios’ first show one can binge.
Echo’s release comes three years after Marvel Studios first launched its own TV shows with WandaVision’s weekly episode drops. The new series is the MCU’s tenth streaming show to be dropped by the studio. In anticipation of that, here's what Brad Winderbaum shared with me regarding switching from the weekly format for this particular title:
Look, binge dropping a series has always been on the table since the beginning. And, a lot of it happens at a high Disney programming level about strategies to retain the audience and to get people coming back week after week, but we always knew that we wanted to play with binge dropping. And, I think Maya's story, the cliffhanger nature of the episodes, the fact that it's so singular in its narrative made it kind of an undeniable candidate to be able to finally binge drop a show. So we're very excited to be able to give a series to the audience all at once.
As Winderbaum shared during our interview, part of Echo’s bingeable nature comes straight from Disney’s programming business strategy. Of course every company has to make these behind-the-scenes decisions when marketing content like streaming TV shows, and Disney clearly felt like it was time to try something new in 2024 starting with Echo.
Additionally, Winderbaum, who has also executive produced tons of other MCU movies and shows like Loki, Secret Invasion, Moon Knight and Hawkeye, shared that the studio has always hoped to play around with binge-dropping a series before Echo. But when the Maya Lopez-led series came about, it had numerous elements that they feel lend well to this release model.
Among those elements is the fact that Echo is the first projects among the studio’s new “Marvel Spotlight” banner. Those in Spotlight, inspired by a series of anthology comics of the same name, will not be concerned with the larger implications of the MCU like the Avengers movies, and will be accessible for anyone to jump in on without having seen all the movies and TV shows before it.
Winderbaum has also recently discussed that the studio has “learned a lot” from its first three years making TV shows, and moving forward will be making shows that are going to “feel a lot more like television.” With Echo, the series feels like somewhat of a return to form from Netflix’s Marvel shows, especially as Charlie Cox’s Daredevil and Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin are among the Echo cast.
During CinemaBlend’s interviews with Echo’s Maya Lopez, Alaqua Cox shared what it was like to do fight choreography with Charlie Cox, and D’Onofrio spoke to why he thinks the series is a “good start” for Kingpin ahead of Daredevil: Born Again. Echo has now arrived on Disney+ and Hulu in full.
