Variety is reporting that Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings director Destin Daniel Cretton will be executive producing a series based on Marvel Comics character Wonder Man for Disney+. While unconfirmed by Marvel, the report says that Andrew Guest will also be an Executive Producer as well as a Head Writer for the show.
In the comics, Wonder Man was Simon Williams who gained ionic powers given to him by Baron Zemo so that he could betray the Avengers in 1964’s Avengers #9. The character then died and stayed that way for over a decade, surely because there may have been fears DC, who has their own Wonder Woman, would cry foul because of the name. By the mid-1970s, though, DC had a Power Girl while Marvel had Power Man, so Marvel revived Simon, and with a brief death or two since then, he’s been a part of the Marvel comic book universe ever since.
Simon Williams ultimately became an actor in addition to being a superhero, and it’s likely that the Disney+ version will explore that route. It might be noted that Wonder Man also has a tie to a major Marvel character we’ve seen in the MCU in both movies and TV — his brain patterns were used for the Vision in the original comic book stories, at a time when he was thought to be “dead.” With that, Simon has ties to all of those characters, and, of course, a tie of his own to Avengers villain the Grim Reaper who happens to be his brother. As you can see above, he also has had the most varied costumes for a male Marvel character, with some looking very sci-fi and others being just a safari jacket.
As Marvel rarely confirms projects in development at an early date, it may be time before we hear more, but this sounds very encouraging as being a thing that will happen. You can read the Variety report here.
