Is What If…? facing any delays in the midst of the pandemic?

The COVID-19 pandemic has been wreaking havoc on productions worldwide for the better part of a month now. From what we’ve been seeing, almost nothing out there is unaffected. However, there is one industry that appears unsurprisingly resilient in this whole thing. The animation industry. Yes, they’ve had to adapt to their staff working from home, but by and large, very little interaction between employees is actually needed in order for them to actually hit their deadlines.

This brings What If…? into question, which is Marvel Studios’ animated series set to hit Disney+ in the summer of 2021. While we’ve seen the Marvel Studios film slate cascade downward, nothing’s been said about the Disney+ slate. Additionally, with What If…? being an animated series, can we expect the production to continue business as usual? 

“I normally split my day between my home studio and the Disney lot for dailies and reviews, but now we’re just doing it all remotely,” head of animation Stephan Franck told Newsarama. “From what I hear across town, animation has been able to keep the shows in production with everyone safely working from home. Kudos to the studios for pivoting so fast to remote work.”

This falls in line with what I’ve been hearing from other animators. In a recent interview I had with Rick and Morty’s Bryan Newton, he discussed how workers are still meeting their deadlines with little issue. 

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If there is a roadblock, however, it is at the front-end of the process. As Newton told me in the interview, they may hit a wall once they run out of story to animate. At the end of the day, voice actors often have to come into studios in order to record, and that work isn’t being done right now. Its seems as though productions are hitting those sort of obstacles. 

“Unfortunately,” Franck continued, “I’m also hearing about some projects in development or with more distant release dates being put on hiatus, but a fair number of people in animation are still at work from the safety of their home, which we are all grateful for.”

Luckily, What If…? is long past the development stage, so it seems like it’ll actually be safe. The series is sure to be an interesting one. As the title indicates, each episode will cover alternative history storylines. For example, what if Peggy Carter received the Super Soldier Serum instead of Captain America?

Though, while the series may not be facing any production delays, it’s worth keeping in mind that a delay is still possible. For all we know, Marvel Studios has a very particular release order in mind. If Marvel Studios delays a live-action series, they may decide to shift the whole slate downward, not unlike how they recently did with the films.

Either way, it’s nice to see the studio making progress.

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SOURCE: Newsarama, LRM