For scriptwriter Malcolm Spellman, getting to be the writer and showrunner of Marvel’s Disney+ television series “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” involved a splitting headache.
Spellman, who was co-executive producer on the first three seasons of the hit show “Empire” and is one of the writers of Marvel’s “Captain America: Brave New World,” was suffering from a migraine on the day he was supposed to pitch his idea for a series about Sam Wilson (played by Anthony Mackie) and Bucky Barnes (played by Sebastian Stan).
For the majority of the Marvel projects, “they have an idea already of what they want to do, not as far as like scene for scene or who the characters are, but [Marvel Studios President] Kevin [Feige] knew because of the comic books, it’s time to do something new with Cap,” Spellman says.
PASSING OF THE SHIELD
Spellman first began working on “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” while the movie “Avengers: Endgame” was being filmed. Consequently, everyone working on the film knew it would end with Steve Rogers passing on the shield to Sam Wilson.
“Most of those storylines in some version took place and Sam Wilson becoming Captain America is also something that exists in the comic books,” Spellman says. “So they knew they wanted to do that.”
With that in mind, senior studio executives reached out for people to come audition to write the series, with Spellman being one of them.
“I got real lucky because Nate [Moore], who is one of their most senior, if not their most senior execs, he’s like, him and Kevin are super tight. He’s a black dude. Nate dug what I was saying on the pitch on my first” try, according to Spellman.
‘I KNEW WHAT I WANTED TO DO’
Once Marvel says it wants to do a Captain America series with Anthony Mackie, “writers come in and Marvel says: ‘Here’s some ideas we have. You can add your ideas to it. You can take them, leave them, mix them together, whatever. And in that process, I knew what I wanted to do,” according to Spellman.
The problem was that Spellman was suffering from a massive migraine on the day he was meant to pitch his idea for “Falcon.”
“The pitch did not go well and Nate was like, ‘You bombed that,'” and while studio execs were meeting with other writers, Moore spoke in favor of Spellman, who eventually got the job.
‘SECRET SAUCE’
Given Marvel’s massive box office returns from 2008 to 2019, one would think there’s a “secret sauce” behind the studio’s success.
Spellman tells a story that may not sound like a compliment, “but it’s the biggest compliment I can give to Kevin Feige.”
When they were looking for directors for “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” Spellman says one of the filmmakers they were interviewing asked Feige: “Kevin, if you had to pick anything, like the one thing that’s the secret sauce to what you guys do here, what is it?”
“Kevin thought about it and he went like this: ‘I don’t know,'” according to Spellman.
“And the key to Marvel, I think is … they don’t show up acting like they know what they know, but they are aware,” he says. “All this shit we’re doing is alchemy and magic and you can’t ever really know if it’s gonna work. And without naming some places, a lot of the places that have had great runs start to believe they know the formula and that’s death.”
Feige’s leadership is one of the main things that has led Marvel to have the success it’s had, Spellman says: “But the fact that he shrugged his shoulders that time is the real magic because he hasn’t fallen into a trap of thinking, ‘I know what I’m doing every time, and this is what works and this is what doesn’t work.'”
For example, for the Isaiah Bradley character played by Carl Lumbly, Spellman says he and Feige “butted heads a lot on whether he could be in the movie. And it wasn’t for any political reasons — Kevin treasures these Marvel characters. And he was like, I might want to use Isaiah Bradley in something else. And, I was like, ‘Nah, dude, he is the heart, he is the spirit of this series.'”
Spellman credits Feige for allowing him a position to fight for the Bradley character without ever feeling nervous about his job.
“And eventually [Feige] gave it up and that was a huge part of the series’ success,” Spellman says. “So that shoulder shrug, I think is the main part of the magic at Marvel.”
At the heart of the series was Sam’s reluctance to take on the mantle of Captain America.
“Especially for a black dude from the South, it’s just not an easy decision to make,” according to Spellman.
At the end of the series, when Sam gives a monologue about why he’s chosen to take on the Captain America mantle, he’s not certain it’s going to work out, according to Spellman.
Especially for a black dude from the South, it’s just not an easy decision to make.
“He’s like, ‘I know people don’t like me wearing the Stars and Stripes and that happened in real life with them in the Marvel universe too,'” Spellman says.
DIVERSE PERSPECTIVES
That real life extends to making sure the people writing those characters need to have their own individual perspectives, he adds.
“I think you need diverse perspectives telling some of these stories for no other reason than we see the world so differently that you’re going to get something fresh,” according to Spellman.
As an example, Spellman offers the “Rocky” franchise, which many thought was “dead” until “a little black kid in Richmond, California was wondering, ‘Whatever happened to Apollo Creed’s family? What if he had a son?'”
And because that kid, Ryan Coogler, was thinking that, “Creed” is born and Sylvester Stallone gets three more movies out of it, according to Spellman.
I think you need diverse perspectives telling some of these stories for no other reason than we see the world so differently that you’re going to get something fresh.
“And that’s not about ‘wokeness,'” he adds. “It’s about this: Nobody else was wondering anything fresh about the Rocky universe because you looked at it through Balboa’s point of view.
“It takes a young black kid in Richmond to be wondering about ‘Creed’ to make something that’s fun for everybody, regardless of race, right? And so, me being a dude from Berkeley, California, I went to high school with some of the [Black] Panthers’ nieces and stuff, right? It just gives you a perspective that’s going to make ‘Falcon and the Winter Soldier’ relevant because the point of view is different.”
Spellman says he was “relieved” with the success of the series, especially since he heard from teachers who were showing it to their classes who felt it had something positive to offer as a story.
RESILIENCE
To really succeed in Hollywood, “resilience” is the No. 1 trait people should have, Spellman advises. “Resilience and hard work are going to beat talent, right?”
As an example, Spellman says what separates a good athlete from, say, basketball players Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant isn’t just natural talent but also the work they put into it and the resilience they have.
“Jordan in particular has always been offended by being called gifted because of there’s a science to everything he does,” Spellman says.
He recalls a documentary he worked on that featured actors Kevin Hart and Chris Rock, “and we were interviewing Chris Rock’s brother who pointed out this moment where Kobe was getting advice from Jordan about the fadeaway jumper and Jordan tells him, and it’s in the doc, ‘What you want to do is put your foot in front of the opponent’s foot when you pivot so that they can’t block it when you jump because they’re off your foot.’
Resilience and hard work are going to beat talent, right?
“That’s the shit nobody sees,” Spellman continues. “That’s making Jordan great. That’s all science and craft, you know what I’m saying? And you get science and craft from effort and effort needs resilience to be sustained.”
