Marvel Studios Vice President of Production & Development Jonathan Schwartz recently revealed the entire premise of the upcoming Disney+ series, Secret Invasion, while also revealing that Samuel L. Jackson did not recognize the character of Nick Fury as depicted in the show.
Schwartz spoke with Total Film about the series explaining that a number of Skrulls are angry that Nick Fury and Captain Marvel have not found them a new home planet and have decided to act on that anger.
Via The Direct, Schwartz said, “Fury and Carol promise the Skrulls they’ll find a new home planet for them to live as themselves. And decades later, that hasn’t happened.”
“The Skrulls are unhappy with the status quo, and starting to get very dissatisfied. A lot of that anger is directed at Nick,” he relayed.
Schwartz’s comments echo what Samuel L. Jackson told Vanity Fair at the end of March, “He told the Skrulls they were trying to find them a place to live. He promised them they were going to find them a planet or somewhere they could be. And that’s not going so well.”
It also follows the show’s official synopsis that reads, “In Marvel Studios’ new series “Secret Invasion,” set in the present day MCU, Nick Fury learns of a clandestine invasion of Earth by a faction of shapeshifting Skrulls. Fury joins his allies, including Everett Ross, Maria Hill and the Skrull Talos, who has made a life for himself on Earth. Together they race against time to thwart an imminent Skrull invasion and save humanity.”
Not only did Schwartz explain the entire premise of the series, but he also revealed that the show features a very different Nick Fury. The character is so different that actor Samuel L. Jackson reportedly told him he didn’t recognize the character.
Schwartz said, “Nick Fury is going through something very internal in this show. On our first call together, Sam said to me, ‘I don’t know this Nick Fury.’ He’s lived the badass Nick Fury. And suddenly, he’s a Nick Fury who’s a little broken and a little older, and wondering what’s his place in all of this and does he have the juice?”
Jackson previously indicated his character was undergoing a radical change for the show similar to that of Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi. Actor Mark Hamill made it clear his character in The Last Jedi was so different from Luke Skywalker that he dubbed him Jake Skywalker.
Hamill explained, “I said to Rian. I said, ‘Jedis don’t give up. I mean even if he had a problem he would maybe take a year to try and regroup. But if he made a mistake he would try and write that wrong.’ So right there we had a fundamental difference. But it’s not my story anymore. It’s somebody else’s story and Rian needed me to be a certain way to make the ending effective.”
Hamill later stated, “That’s the whole crux of my problem. Luke would never say that, I’m sorry. Well, in this version, see. I’m talking about the George Lucas Star Wars. This is the next generation of Star Wars. So I almost had to think of Luke as another character. Maybe he’s Jake Skywalker. He’s not my Luke Skywalker, but I had to do what RIan wanted me to do because it serves the story well.”
Jackson made similar comments to Vanity Fair about Nick Fury telling the outlet, “Even Nick Fury can be shaken, you know?”
He then went on to explain why Nick Fury has left earth for space as was depicted in a post-credit scene during Spider-Man: Far From Home, “He’s up there trying to process what the f**k happened, you know? And what his place in the world is.”
He added, “The death of Iron Man, the death of Black Widow—with that stuff going on, he just kind of checked out.”
As for the tone of the series, Schwartz told Total Film they were hoping to return to the tone of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, “It had always been talked about, but never really happened. We really liked the idea of a more grounded espionage thriller. That felt like the right home for Nick.”
He added, “That’s the way things crystallise sometimes in the MCU. You talk about something for a long time, and then the right idea or the right medium or the right genre just catalyses it, and makes it real.”
Jackson previously detailed the show would incorporate modern American politics, “There’s a political aspect that kind of fits into where we are right now: Who’s okay? Who’s not? What happens when people get afraid and don’t understand other people? You can’t tell who’s innocent and who’s guilty in this particular instance.”
This would also be echoed by Ben Mendelsohn, who plays Talos. He told Vanity Fair, “I think any time that you get cultures that have significant tensions between groups of people, then you can find a corollary.”
“The Cold War stuff is the big one that jumps out, but there is plenty of strife between groups of people that this addresses,” he says.
Secret Invasion arrives on Disney+ on June 21, 2023. The series stars Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Cobie Smulders, Martin Freeman, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Charlayne Woodard, Killian Scott, Samuel Adewunmi, Dermot Mulroney, Christopher McDonald, Katie Finneran, Emilia Clarke, Olivia Colman, and Don Cheadle. The series was directed by Ali Selim with Kyle Bradstreet serving as the Head Writer.
What do you make of Schwartz’s comments about the series?