KUALA LUMPUR, March 24 — The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is tapping into its darker side with the latest live action series, Moon Knight.
The six-part Marvel limited series will introduce viewers to protagonist Steven Grant played by Oscar Isaac, a mild-mannered Englishman who lives a mundane life plagued by blackouts and mysterious memories of a separated life other than his own.
After a fateful encounter, Steven discovers that he has dissociative identity disorder and shares a body with former mercenary, Marc Spector, who’s also a ruthless avatar of Khonshu, the Egyptian god of moon and vengeance.
With enemies converging upon them, Steven must learn how to adapt to this revelation and work with Marc amid a deadly battle played out among the powerful gods of Egypt.
With the latest MCU’s live action series debuting in a week, cast members and showrunners of the show break down their thoughts and process behind Moon Knight.
According to Marvel executive producer Grant Curtis, Moon Knight has been on Kevin Feige’s radar from the beginning, and it was the perfect time to introduce the multiple personality superhero into the MCU.
“You look at his (Moon Knight) history, first appearing in Werewolf by Night in 1975. Then, he kind of bounced around in the Marvel Universe for the next five years, and he got his own offering in 1980.
“And when you look at years and decades of storytelling, as the great storytellers and artists on the Moon Knight pages have been doing, I think this was a natural progression, a merger into the Marvel Cinematic Universe and I think it was just like this was the perfect time.
“When you look at Disney+ and needing a broader canvas to tell this incredible story, March 30th, the audience will see it, and this was the perfect time to drop into the universe,” Curtis said.
As for Golden Globe winner Oscar Isaac, who has to juggle between his Steven Grant, Marc Spector and other personas in the Moon Knight series said that they had to bring in his own brother, Michael Hernandez on set in order to shoot the scenes.
“So, he came in and he would play either Steven or Marc, (he would) even do the accent and everything, both accents.
“So that was really helpful to have someone that’s not only a great actor but also shares my DNA to play off of. But that was something that I didn’t anticipate was how technically demanding that was going to be of having to show up and decide which character I was going to play first.
“And then try to block that out, give my brother notes, and then do the scene, and then switch characters, and then figure it out,” Isaac said, adding that it was both fun and challenging.
Isaac also said that Moon Knight will have a point-of-view type of storytelling approach with Steven as the one with the sense of humour while Marc is not.
The Star Wars actor added that his love for English humour influenced his Steven Grant character and he was inspired by English comedians like Peter Sellers, Karl Pilkington, and Russel Kane.
He also revealed that the reason why Marvel was introducing Moon Knight in the UK is because ‘there’s too many characters in New York’.
This comes as no surprise as there are currently multiple MCU’s superheroes residing in New York such as Spiderman, Dr Strange and as revealed in Spiderman: No Way Home, Daredevil although he’s yet to make his appearance as the devil of Hell’s Kitchen.
Meanwhile, Moon Knight will also star American director and actor, Ethan Hawke who will be portraying the charismatic antagonist, Arthur Harrow.
According to Hawke, in the past, storytellers would often use mental illness as a building block for the villain; however the process was reversed with Moon Knight.
“And so now as the antagonist, I can’t be crazy because the hero’s crazy. So, I have to kind of find a sane lunatic or a sane malevolent force.
“And that was an interesting riddle for me to figure out how to be in dynamics with what Oscar was doing.
“And once you’ve broken the prism of reality, everything that the audience is seeing is from a skewed point of view. And that’s really interesting for the villain because am I even being seen as I am?” he said.
Apart from touching on mental illness, Moon Knight is also MCU’s take on Egyptian iconography as the series will feature Egypt and the Egyptian gods in accordance with Moon Knight comic book origins.
According to Moon Knight showrunner Mohamed Diab, the Egyptian aspect of the show was one of the reasons why he agreed to take on the helm.
“As an Egyptian, we always see ourselves depicted or the Middle East depicted in a way that is — we call it orientalism, when you see us as exotic and dehumanised.
“Imagine Paris and you’re seeing Big Ben in the background. That’s how we see our country. So, it’s funny, but it hurts. So that’s really what attracted me,” he said.
The Moon Knight series will also star May Calamawy as Layla El-Fouly along with Jeremy Slater as the show’s head writer, who has worked on series such as The Umbrella Academy and The Exorcist.
Executive producers are Kevin Feige, Louis D’Esposito, Victoria Alonso, Brad Winderbaum, Grant Curtis, Oscar Isaac, Mohamed Diab and Jeremy Slater, with Trevor Waterson and Rebecca Kirsch serving as co-executive producers.
Moon Knight launches on March 30, exclusively on DisneyPlus Hotstar.
