We’ve been hearing for ages that Marvel Studios has been trying to put together a live-action “Nova” project featuring their cosmic superhero (Nova Corps. being first introduced in James Gunn’s “Guardians of The Galaxy”), and more recently was confirmed to be a television series in development at Disney+, as part of their string of MCU shows. However, a new quote from Marvel Television‘s Brad Winderbaum (via Comic Book) suggests the “Nova” series isn’t exactly a guarantee that it will happen and will depend on a strong pilot that everyone is happy with.

“So Nova’s in development right now. We are. But I will say we’re developing more than we make. This is part of the new Marvel,” Winderbaum told Comic Book. “But we should talk about this because at Marvel, everything has a spotlight on it, and everyone gets super excited, and we love Nova. And we want to get it right. But it’s in development. We got a few things in development and we’re not going to go on a show until we are happy with a pilot. Happy with the bible. So it is in development right now.”

When asked about their approach for cosmic material on the streaming service Winderbaum said, “I mean, I’ve been really inspired by what [‘Star Trek’] has been doing over the last few years. I think their shows are incredible. That’s why we hired Terry [Matalas] to do ‘Vision Quest’ with us. But the ‘Nova’ that’s being developed right now, it’s an amazing ensemble piece. I shouldn’t say too much.”

A bit of a promising thread in there from Winderbaum. Even if it doesn’t sound like Marvel is exactly ready to pounce on a pilot anytime soon. We previously heard from Marvel at San Diego Comic-Con back in July that they had been aiming to have “Nova” ready for Disney+ by around 2027-2028, which likely means it might not even begin shooting until 2026 at the earliest. While we’re still waiting on more concrete details, but there have been suggestions that both Richard Rider and Sam Alexander versions of Nova will be featured in whatever materializes.

After the destruction of the Nova Corps. by Thanos, off-screen events leading up to the opening scene of “Avengers: Infinity War,” a new Nova Prime emerges and happens to be a human named Richard Rider and ends up being a new protector of the galaxy.

Hopefully, they are likely going the off-world route with the character potentially taking more cues from things like the first two “Guardians of The Galaxy” films and the recent string of live-action “Star Wars” shows from a production design/VFX perspective, given we’d really like to see more MCU aliens and planets explored in this new show.

Cost will likely be a huge factor here given that originally, Don Cheadle’s “Armor Wars” was going to be a streaming series until Marvel pivoted and turned the show into a feature film, likely due to the huge VFX budget that would be needed to pull off that storyline and how it would essentially be a defacto “Iron Man 4.” Then again, we haven’t heard a peep from Marvel about an “Armor Wars” update in a long time despite having plenty of opportunities this summer with the studio’s big presentations at San Diego Comic-Con and D23.

There is a slim chance that “Nova” could move from the television division to the feature film team. Of course, that’s if they see more potential for a big-screen incarnation of “Nova” given that there doesn’t seem to be too many cosmic movies on the MCU docket outside of “Fantastic Four: First Steps” and the next two “Avengers” installments (“Avengers: Doomsday,” “Avengers: Secret Wars”) coming from the Russo Brothers.

I also wouldn’t be all that shocked if Marvel is simply waiting to see what DC Studios/HBO ends up doing with their “Green Lantern” series “Lanterns” before moving forward with “Nova,” as the two would likely have some similarities. That DC Comics show has Chris Mundy (“True Detective: Night Country,” “Ozark”) serving as showrunner and exec producer along with Damon Lindelof (“Prometheus,” “Watchmen”) also involved.

SOURCE: COMIC BOOK