{"id":21192,"date":"2021-08-06T08:00:53","date_gmt":"2021-08-06T12:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev2.worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/worldscreen.com\/"},"modified":"2021-08-06T13:03:29","modified_gmt":"2021-08-06T17:03:29","slug":"disney-junior-brings-team-spidey-to-preschoolers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/disney-junior-brings-team-spidey-to-preschoolers\/","title":{"rendered":"Disney Junior Brings Team Spidey to Preschoolers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Harrison Wilcox, executive producer of Marvel’s Spidey and his Amazing Friends, talks to <\/em>TV Kids about Marvel’s first full-length series for preschoolers.<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s been over a decade since The Walt Disney Company\u2019s transformative $4 billion acquisition of Marvel Entertainment. Since then, the comic-book giant and its treasure trove of iconic IP has extended itself across all of Disney\u2019s numerous consumer touchpoints. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has spawned a slew of blockbuster movies plus three acclaimed series on Disney+, with more to come. Several animated series featuring Marvel superheroes have aired on Disney XD, and today marks the long-awaited arrival of Marvel\u2019s Spidey and his Amazing Friends<\/em>, the first full-length Marvel series for preschoolers. The Disney Junior show sees young Peter Parker, Gwen Stacy and Miles Morales\u2014Team Spidey\u2014joining forces with several guest Avengers to take on the villains Rhino, Doc Ock and Green Goblin. Disney Junior and Marvel Entertainment produce the 25-episode CGI series in association with Atomic Cartoons.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cFor years, Marvel and Disney Junior wanted to do something together, and they figured out that there was no one better than Spidey to make a preschool series out of,\u201d Harrison Wilcox, executive producer on the show, tells TV Kids Weekly<\/em>. \u201cHe is the original kid superhero\u2014he was the first one. That felt like a perfect fit for everyone. Miles and Gwen had become more and more popular over the years. It just seemed like it would be a great opportunity to do a show about these three spider heroes together.\u201d<\/p>\n

To age Peter, Gwen and Miles down to characters that would be appropriate for preschool audiences, Wilcox and his team looked to the Spider-Man comics from the \u201960s and \u201970s for inspiration. \u201cWe looked back to the fun and the wonder of those stories. That was a great place to start with tone and plot and storytelling. And then we looked at, how young can we make these characters to be relatable to the intended audience, but still have them go out and have these fantastic superhero adventures, stopping villains from taking over and ruining things?\u201d<\/p>\n

The producers also had to carefully craft the villains that Team Spidey takes on each week. \u201cWe wanted our heroes to have distinct personalities and power sets, so we\u2019d have a wider swath of storytelling opportunities. We then looked at the different motivations that are relatable to kids of this age group. We realized we wanted a villain who is trying to take over the city, a villain who likes to ruin other people\u2019s fun and a villain who likes to take things that don\u2019t belong to him. With ruling the city, we found Doc Ock; ruining other people\u2019s fun, that became Goblin; and taking things that don\u2019t belong to you, that\u2019s Rhino. That\u2019s where we started, and we built out their motivations and personalities based on that and always kept it lighthearted and fun, never frightening. The term we use is naughty, never nefarious.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beloved Avengers also appear in the series, among them Hulk, Ms. Marvel and Black Panther. \u201cThey are very much the characters everyone knows and loves,\u201d Wilcox explains. \u201cWe tried with our casting and with our storytelling to age them down slightly, just a little bit, so they felt like they were friends of our Spider characters. It\u2019s Spidey and <\/em>his Amazing Friends<\/em>. We didn\u2019t want there to feel like there was too much of an age difference between them, but the details of that never come into play in the storytelling. Our focus is more on the characters\u2019 motivations, not necessarily their age.\u201d<\/p>\n

Superheroes and villains can indeed be a challenge in storytelling for preschoolers; the heroes need to be aspirational but not out of reach, the villains need to throw obstacles in the heroes\u2019 paths but never be terror-inducing. \u201cIt\u2019s a fine line,\u201d Wilcox says. \u201cWe want there to be stakes, we want the stories to matter, we want authentic storytelling, but at the same time, we never want our audience to be scared\u2014we want them to be having fun along the way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Teamwork is the core theme across the 25 episodes. \u201cWe try to have every other story have all three of the kids, but sometimes it will just be two of them, where it\u2019s one of them with an Avenger,\u201d Wilcox explains. \u201cTeamwork is what most of the stories focus on. As time goes on, we have other themes we\u2019re trying to get to, like community responsibility\u2014taking care of not just the environment but of one another.\u201d<\/p>\n

Providing an opportunity for co-viewing is also central to the show\u2019s charm, given its protagonists are characters beloved by multiple generations of viewers. \u201cI have preschool-aged kids at home, so I was making a preschool show while running a preschool for the last year and a half!\u201d Wilcox quips. \u201cIf I were making a show for an audience my age, I\u2019d make a show I\u2019d want to watch. What excited me about this show is I had the opportunity to make a show I want to watch with my kids and that my kids want to watch.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wilcox was indeed making a show at home<\/em>, with the show being largely produced during the Covid-19 pandemic. \u201cIt\u2019s been a challenge. We\u2019ve said how fortunate we are during the difficulties that everyone has gone through in the past year and a half. We are working on making something that is fun, that brings joy to kids and their families. That allowed us to somewhat take what\u2019s been going on in stride. We are lucky enough that the business of animation can be done remotely fairly easily. For a three-week period, we had to figure out the one gap\u2014how to do voice recordings. Once production figured out how to get microphones into actors\u2019 garages, basements, closets, bathrooms\u2014wherever they do their recordings from\u2014we were up and rolling. We could continue this way forever. It takes more coordination and work, but by and large, we didn\u2019t have any hiccups along the way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wilcox is already toying with ideas for future seasons, but right now, the entire focus is on making sure preschoolers and their families quickly fall in love with Marvel’s<\/em> Spidey and his Amazing Friends<\/em>. \u201cThis is Marvel. This is Spider-Man. This is Disney Junior. It\u2019s a phenomenal opportunity we have to reach a new audience with these characters.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Harrison Wilcox, executive producer of Marvel’s Spidey and his Amazing Friends, on Marvel’s first full-length series for preschoolers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":21193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,21],"tags":[112,6125,813,6126],"class_list":["post-21192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-profiles","category-top-stories","tag-disney-junior","tag-harrison-wilcox","tag-marvel","tag-spidey-and-his-amazing-friends","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\nDisney Junior Brings Team Spidey to Preschoolers - TVKIDS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/disney-junior-brings-team-spidey-to-preschoolers\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Disney Junior Brings Team Spidey to Preschoolers - TVKIDS\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Harrison Wilcox, executive producer of Marvel's Spidey and his Amazing Friends, on Marvel's first full-length series for preschoolers.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/disney-junior-brings-team-spidey-to-preschoolers\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"TVKIDS\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-08-06T12:00:53+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-08-06T17:03:29+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2017\/07\/Spidey-and-his-Amazing-Friends-821.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"319\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mansha Daswani\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Mansha Daswani\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/disney-junior-brings-team-spidey-to-preschoolers\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/disney-junior-brings-team-spidey-to-preschoolers\/\",\"name\":\"Disney Junior Brings Team Spidey to Preschoolers - TVKIDS\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2021-08-06T12:00:53+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2021-08-06T17:03:29+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/#\/schema\/person\/83da304c8bad8bfdb3edd7eb47cfe5ad\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/disney-junior-brings-team-spidey-to-preschoolers\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/disney-junior-brings-team-spidey-to-preschoolers\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/disney-junior-brings-team-spidey-to-preschoolers\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Disney Junior Brings Team Spidey to Preschoolers\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/\",\"name\":\"TVKIDS\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/#\/schema\/person\/83da304c8bad8bfdb3edd7eb47cfe5ad\",\"name\":\"Mansha Daswani\",\"description\":\"Mansha Daswani is the editor-in-chief and associate publisher of World Screen. 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