Hulu released the first trailer for MODOK, his next animation program that will see Patton Oswalt dubbing the titular villain of Marvel in a more cheerful way Robot Chicken-style take on the usual portentous superhero dramas of the franchise. The program also has a release date: it premieres on May 21 on the streaming service.
MODOK (mental organism designed only to kill) has been a longtime villain at Marvel Comics as the leader of the evil scientific group AIM. (A more serious approach to the character serves as the main antagonist for the story of Square Enix Avengers video game, released last year.)
In the new animated series from Hulu, MODOK managed to bankrupt AIM, resulting in the dismissal of the supervillain as leader of the organization and leaving the huge floating head to solve his professional and family problems on his own.
MODOK was originally part of a larger list of Marvel animated programs planned for Hulu in 2019 by the now defunct Marvel TV, alongside Hit-Monkey, Tigra and Dazzler, and Howard the Duck Series. The four shows were then scheduled to cross in a special called The Offenders (a view of existing crossover programs like the Avengers movies or Netflix’s Defenders for your Marvel heroes).
These plans would be discontinued later in 2019, when Marvel TV was closed, studio head Jeph Loeb (who oversaw the new animation shows) left the company and Marvel TV’s future efforts were placed under Kevin’s Marvel Studios division. Feige (who has an impressive number of Marvel shows planned for Disney Plus in the coming years). Programs that were already in development on Marvel TV – such as the final seasons of SHIELD agents, Hulu’s Helstrom, and MODOK – were allowed to finish their work, but the other shows were canceled briefly.
In that light, MODOK it’s not just a crazy spin in the Marvel universe; it’s a final glimpse of a different path that the company’s comic book adaptations could have taken before the MCU fully took over the future of Marvel’s TV shows.