WandaVision Consultant Dick Van Dyke Had No Idea the MCU Was Such a Huge Success
The MCU is the most successful movie franchise of all time, and now it is getting ready to conquer the television landscape as well, with Disney+’s WandaVision. The show pays tribute to classic sitcoms from every era. In order to lend authenticity to the endeavor, WandaVision director Matt Shakman took the help of Disney legend Dick Van Dyke. Shakman recently revealed that Van Dyke had no idea just how massively successful the MCU was until showrunner Kevin Feige informed him of the recent success of Avengers: Endgame.
“We did have to give [Dick Van Dyke] the explanation, and he didn’t seem to be too fluent with the MCU. It was great. He did say at one point during our lunch, ‘Oh, I hear you guys have had some great success. That’s wonderful. Congratulations. What did you just put out?’ And Kevin, who’s great, obviously Kevin is this mastermind of this incredible creative endeavor that’s had so much success, he said, ‘Well, yes, well, we just put out Avengers: Endgame.’ And [Dick] was like, ‘Oh, Avengers: Endgame? Oh, great. Fantastic.’ He said, ‘Yep, it’s actually the biggest movie of all time.’ ‘Oh, great. Is it– What! The biggest movie of all time?!’ He was like, ‘That’s amazing!’ It was so sweet to see Kevin realize and Dick realized what they were talking about. It was really fun.”
It is amusing to consider that Dick Van Dyke thought he was consulting on a strange little show based on classic sitcoms, before realizing WandaVision is a direct sequel to the highest-grossing movie of all time. Still, while the veteran actor might not have been fully cognizant of who Iron Man and Captain America are, the advice he gave Shakman was of great help in figuring out the tone and tenor of WandaVision, as the filmmaker further explained.
“A lot of the things that I took from [our conversation with Dick Van Dyke] really did affect how we approached especially our pilot episode, which is sort of an homage to The Dick Van Dyke Show, as well as I Love Lucy and some of the other sitcoms of that era. But we learned from Dick Van Dyke that their number one rule for how they approached anything was that if it couldn’t happen in real life, it can’t happen on the show. Which is this idea that you need to ground what you’re doing in real-life stories, but then that gives you the permission to be incredibly silly and to fall over the ottoman and do pratfalls. That was very helpful in how we approached the tone of it, because getting the tone right is the hardest thing in the ’50s, the ’60s, the ’70s. It changes. It adjusts.”
Written by Jac Schaeffer and directed by Matt Shakman, WandaVision stars Elizabeth Olsen as Scarlet Witch, Paul Bettany as Vision, Randall Park as Agent Jimmy Woo, Kat Dennings as Darcy Lewis, Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau, and Kathryn Hahn as Agnes. The limited series debuts on Disney+ in December. This news comes from ET Online.
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