Marvel supported Wonder Man despite bad test screenings, but it "almost didn’t survive" the big MCU Disney Plus strategy shift: "I just held on and hoped and prayed"

Wonder Man showrunner Andrew Guest says it was a bumpy road to get the Marvel Disney Plus series made.

"[There were] several moments where we almost didn't survive, I can tell you," Guest said on The Watch podcast. "We were sort of one of the last projects in the door of the previous iteration of the Marvel Disney Plus experiment, where they were saying yes to many things... which is a nice place to be until suddenly you can't. There was a period during our writing where many things at Marvel were looked at sort of through a new critical lens of what we can pare down, and we were definitely one of those things that was taken off their board for a moment there. The producers who were part of our project fought like hell to convince people this is something worth continuing with."

Guest also added that, well after the series was greenlit, Wonder Man received poor test screenings for the first two episodes. Rather than back out, however, Marvel told Guest and his team that they would simply need to market the show differently.

Wonder Man, which has been praised by critics for being a very different (and therefore refreshing) Marvel project, follows Simon Williams (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), a struggling actor with secret superpowers, as he auditions for the lead role in a superhero movie. He crosses paths with Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley), and chaos ensues from there.

The series currently sits at a Rotten Tomatoes score of 91%, and an impressive audience rating of 88%, which is pretty high for a Marvel series nowadays. It also garnered around 550 million minutes watched in its first 10 days on Disney Plus. Our own Wonder Man review hailed the impossibly meta show as one that "stands apart from the rest of the MCU as a warm and witty buddy comedy set against the backdrop of Hollywood."

Wonder Man is streaming now on Disney Plus. Get up to speed on the rest of Marvel Phase 6 with our guide to the other upcoming Marvel movies and shows.