The Marvel television universe has more grit to come.
Entertainment Weekly spoke to showrunner of the upcoming Luke Cage Cheo Hodari Coker (Southland, NCIS: Los Angeles) at the Captain America: Civil War premiere (it’s good time to be a Marvel fan). Like it’s fellow Marvel shows, Coker says Luke Cage will posses it’s own unique flavor of grit. “It’s very sophisticated. I mean, it’s got a ’90s hip-hop vibe, but it’s really forward-thinking. We have Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad doing the scoring for us. We have a lot of different musical appearances, but at the same time, we’ve got the Marvel action. We’ve got drama.” Coker said.
Luke Cage will of course focus on the super impervious character of the same name that already starred in Marvel’s Jessica Jones. One defining element that sets this new show apart is its location. Instead of Hell’s Kitchen, the show will focus on Harlem. “I would like this to be, I mean, I know this is heavy but, The Wire of Marvel television, because we really deal with a lot of different issues.”
EW also spoke with stars of the show, including Simone Missick who will be playing Luke’s spectacularly named partner in crime fighting Misty Knight. “[Misty Knight] is so larger than life, and being able to put the voice to it for the first time is exciting,” Missick said.
Luke Cage himself Mike Colter says the show will balance serving fans of the comic book as well as being accessible to a modern audience. “We were trying not to be on the nose. We’re going to give all the fans all the things they want, but we’ve got to bring it up a bit and step into the current time. So we’re going to make sure everybody’s happy.” That applies for Luke Cage’s less than modern outfit from the comics. “Don’t expect a yellow shirt every day. Let’s put it that way … We brought it to mustard. We started there. We knocked it down a bit. Not so bright.”
While the words “The Wire of Marvel” may seem preposterous, it makes some sense given the roster of decidedly different Marvel heroes on Netflix. Daredevil, whose second season premiered last month has darkly examined vigilante morality, even using Catholicism as a backdrop. Meanwhile Luke’s alumnus Jessica Jones may have superficially been about a super strong alcoholic battling a bad guy named Killgrave, but really was a noir-ish allegory for rape survivors and PTSD. Also coming up is the Eastern philosophical, martial arts laden Iron Fist. All of these shows will eventually lead up to The Defenders miniseries, which is expected to start shooting later this year.
Luke Cage premieres on Netflix September 30. Watch the teaser trailer below.