According to Comic Book Resources, Secret Invasion director Ali Selim was told to avoid the comic run that the new titular Disney Plus show is based on.
Back in the halcyon days of the late 2000s, Marvel Studios burst onto the superhero movie scene with an energy that the film industry had never seen. Although the superhero genre was already in full swing thanks to movies like Spider-Man, Batman: Begins, and the X-Men franchise, comic book movies were still missing a little something.
Prior to the Marvel cinematic universe, studios would frequently feel the need to fix comic book plotlines by needlessly altering them under the guise of making the adaptation more palatable to a broader audience. Spider-Man lost his web shooters; the Joker was responsible for killing Batman's parents, and Rogue was a shell of her comic-accurate self. Was there any logical reason to make the aforementioned alterations? Not really. Hollywood just didn't have any respect for the source material and thought that condensing "unnecessary" plot beats would make their adaptation stronger.
Marvel Studios, as an extension of the eponymous comic book company, took a different approach. Barring the alterations to the source material designed to modernize characters- i.e., having Iron Man's origin take place in the Middle East as opposed to, ya know, Vietnam- Marvel went out of their way to make sure their films contained as many nods to the comic as possible. And for a while, there was peace between the neckbeard fans with dozens of long boxes and the casual consumers of superhero media.
Now that the MCU has become the biggest franchise on earth, Marvel is actively telling directors to ignore the comics their adaptation is based on. Meet the new boss; same as the old boss.
Secret Invasion director Ali Selim reveals he received advice not to read the titular Marvel Comics storyline that the live-action miniseries is based on when he had just joined the project.
Speaking with Screen Rant, Selim delved into how he became involved with the Marvel Cinematic Universe show and the inspiration behind the Samuel L. Jackson-led effort. Selim admitted he wasn't involved with the script when he came on board but received advice to avoid reading the eponymous crossover storyline as he tried to bring Marvel's first "event" to the small screen. "When I took on this job as director, I didn't write the script. So a lot of those decisions were made by Kyle Bradstreet and the other team of writers that we had. The first thing I was told is don't read the comics. It had nothing to do with what we're trying to do here," Selim said.
