Home Entertainment Anthony Mackie says Falcon & Winter Soldier is a “six or eight-hour movie”

Anthony Mackie says Falcon & Winter Soldier is a “six or eight-hour movie”

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When (hopefully not “if”) Black Widow eventually releases in cinemas on 6 November after being delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it will be over 16 months since the release of Spider-Man: Far From Home. That’s the longest gap ever between movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. If you can’t wait that long though, there may actually be another Marvel movie releasing before Black Widow. Well, maybe not a movie in the traditional sense but that makes it even more exciting.

Officially billed as an “event series”, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is the first of Marvel Studios’ own TV series set to debut on Disney+ in August with weekly episodes. As Marvel boss Kevin Feige has explained in the past, these series are not like other Marvel TV productions produced by other networks that only tied-in tangentially. These will be intrinsic to fans’ MCU experience, setting up and reacting to the events of the big-screen releases. And according to star Anthony Mackie (via Variety), as far as production goes, Marvel is treating TFATWS just like the studio would any of those other blockbuster movies.

We’re shooting it exactly like a movie. Everybody who had worked on TV before was like, ‘I’ve never worked on a TV show like this.’ The way in which we were shooting, it feels exactly like we were shooting the movie cut up into the show. So instead of a two-hour movie, a six or eight-hour movie.

Those movies are like summer camp. And this show, it was no different. It was the same group of people, coming together to make it work. And so the stunt stuff — everything is just on another level. Every show, every movie, they just push it — they push the envelope so much.

TFATWS will be digging into the end of Avengers: Endgame after Captain America handed over his shield to Mackie’s Falcon, and not to his best friend Bucky aka the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan). Concept art released have given us looks at both Falcon and Bucky’s new costumes, as well the introduction of Wyatt Russell as US Agent, another (possibly bad) contender to the Captain American legacy, which sounds pretty exciting and I can’t wait to see it.

Of course, whether TFATWS actually makes that August release window or follows its “movie” peers and gets delayed is still up in the air. The show still had a few weeks of shooting left in Prague, the Czech Republic when production was shut down in early March due to the global pandemic. That led to some unique challenges that no other Marvel production has had to face yet.

We were in Europe, and everything got crazy in Europe first. So they shut us down two weeks before the U.S. shutdown. It was really amazing just because I feel like we’re the first Marvel show or movie that had budget constraints. And that was always my [experience], ‘It’s Marvel, we could shoot forever.’ And they’re like, ‘Nah.’ So it was a very different experience from the rest of the movies. But at the same time, it was a lot of fun.

Luckily, the Czech Republic announced in late May that work in the film and TV industry would be allowed to resume soon if productions adhered to newly issued hygienic guidelines for cast and crew members. It’s unclear if TFATWS has resumed shooting yet, but other productions that were also shut down – like Amazon Prime Video’s Carnival Row – are already getting back into the swing of things. It doesn’t sound as if there’s a lot of principal photography left for the Marvel production, but given that there would probably be some post-production work needed on some of this footage, I have a feeling that we may still get a short delay announced for that August release date.

Last Updated: June 29, 2020

13 Comments

  1. Wish we could get Disney+ here :(. I’m keen to see what the dynamic between Falcon (or Captain America now I suppose?) and Winter Soldier will be./
    Who is dressed as Cap in the 3rd picture?

    Also, non critical correction, but Carnival Row is Amazon Prime. And I’m sad that there won’t be more of that soon too.

    Reply

    • HairyEwok

      June 29, 2020 at 15:12

      VPN to get a disney+ account.

      Reply

      • Lu

        June 29, 2020 at 15:12

        Yes a VPN would solve many issues, but I don’t know if I’m morally happy with the idea.
        I honestly don’t even know if it’s illegal or not, and as much as I’d like to see DSTV and SuckMax burn, if there’s a law against it I’d prefer not to break it.

        If that makes any sense.

        Reply

        • HairyEwok

          June 29, 2020 at 15:19

          Illegal no, but it is in breach of their terms of service which means worst case is they terminate your account. But i hardly think they’ll do that since most corporates are driven by money.

          Reply

          • Lu

            June 29, 2020 at 15:19

            Hmmmm. I’ll check out the options. Having American Netflix would be nice too.
            Thanks.

        • Kervyn Cloete

          June 29, 2020 at 16:10

          When I spoke directly to Disney SA reps and they told me that they’re looking to launch locally around Oct 2021, I mentioned that people are going to pirate things to hell and back. And they simply said, yes they know and it sucks but what else can they do?

          Reply

          • Lu

            June 29, 2020 at 16:24

            It’s sad that the rollout is so slow here.
            But we waited years for Netflix and Prime too, so we’ll survive.

          • Kervyn Cloete

            June 29, 2020 at 16:24

            It’s all down to licenses. Multichoice owns the content until then.

          • Lu

            June 30, 2020 at 07:22

            Unfortunately. And it’s not like they’re actually doing anything with it – also they aren’t getting a cent from me. They’re the Telkom of tv.
            But at least there’s more than enough to watch on other platforms till then.

      • Iskape

        June 30, 2020 at 07:36

        I just find using the VPN workaround irritating. If I’m sitting in front of my TV with my Nvidia Shield, I really don’t want to load the VPN app, wait for it to connect, and then open up Disney + (and I’d have to sideload it as well with Android TV – I don’t even know if it’s possible to sideload in Android TV; I know you can do it with plain Android – which is even more complicated), and then, if I want to return to Netflix or DStv Now, during the same sitting, I have to close the VPN app first and then open one of the other apps (it won’t be a quick switch in the app manager).

        Reply

    • Kervyn Cloete

      June 29, 2020 at 15:19

      1. That’s Wyatt Russell as US Agent.

      2. Thanks for that catch. That was a brain fart on my part.

      Reply

      • Lu

        June 29, 2020 at 15:19

        1. Will have to hit the wiki as I have no idea who that is!
        2. Haha at this point with all the services it’s an easy oops

        Reply

  2. CodeDisQus

    June 29, 2020 at 23:09

    EXCITED AS HELL for this. Hopefully they are really investing in the production values.

    Reply

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