KNIGHT SHIFT

MULTIPLE IDENTITIES, EGYPTIAN MYTHOLOGY AND A CORKER OF A COCKNEY ACCENT CAN MEAN ONLY ONE THING: MOON KNIGHT MAKES ITS BOW IN THE MCU. TOTAL FILM CHATS WITH STARS OSCAR ISAAC AND ETHAN HAWKE, AND THE CREATIVE TEAM BEHIND THEM, ABOUT MARVEL’S SINGULAR NEW HERO.

- JAMES MOTTRAM

In the mosaic that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you suspect there has always been a place for Moon Knight. The cowlwearing crimefighter – and the alter-ego of former CIA spook Marc Spector – may be at the lesser-known end of the Marvel Comics spectrum, but that didn’t stop fans daydreaming about his screen debut. When Kevin Feige was asked about the character back in April 2018, the producer confessed there had been discussions to bring Moon Knight into the MCU. But when? “Does that mean five years from now,” he teased, “10 years from now, 15 years from now?”

Shortly afterwards, head writer Jeremy Slater (Netflix’s unorthodox superhero show The Umbrella Academy) was brought in to discuss the character for a planned six-part Disney+ series. “I am a Marvel kid for life,” he says, sitting today in his office in front of a Jaws shark toy still in its box. “I grew up on Marvel comic books. So I had been trying to get into the MCU camp, literally, since the day I saw the first Iron Man.”

While Marvel’s recent small-screen output – WandaVision, Loki, The Falcon And The Winter Soldier and Hawkeye – has all been centred around familiar faces, Moon Knight is the Phase Four entry from leftfield. “Kevin is constantly looking to expand the borders and the boundaries of what is a Marvel project,” says Slater. “I think it would be very easy for them to continue to kind of churn out Avengers and Avengers-style knockoffs. And that’s not at all what they want to do or what they’re creatively excited by.”