MOON KNIGHT. New Marvel superhero, new series on Disney+. Moon Knight offers subscribers the platform to discover Oscar Isaac in a series on a very special character. Its director, Mohamed Diab, tells us about the creation of this series.
[Mis à jour le 30 mars 2022 à 9h00] This is the event series of Disney++ at the end of March, Moon Knight is the new production of Marvel Studios. Bringing the comic book superhero to the screen, the six-episode series focuses on Steven Grant, an employee of a London museum who lives a fairly flat life except for one detail: he is a sleepwalker and, at night, he dreams that he is an over-trained soldier. Very quickly, he realizes that he is not quite the only master of his body envelope, which he shares with a certain Mark Spector, whose identity he will have to discover but also the past throughout the series. . Because Mark Spector is struggling with supernatural forces dating back to ancient Egypt.
Mohamed Diab, an Egyptian director of drama films, was responsible for the production of four of the six episodes of the series. We had the opportunity to ask him a few questions ahead of the broadcast of the series on Disney+. He describes for us behind the scenes of this series, which tries new things compared to the cinematographic universe Marvel while introducing a new character still unknown to the general public.
Moon Knight looks very different from other MCU superheroes. How did you transfer it from comics to screen?
Marvel’s recipe for success is that they are constantly reinventing themselves. After introducing so many superheroes, they chose this dark character, and giving it to someone like me, who’s done dark movies, meant they wanted to go in a new direction. I immediately wanted to push the dramatic side even further. We had to make the series darker, for the visuals to be different. They accepted that I write my own draft to push the series even further.
And then we also recruited actors who could actually help me in that direction, Oscar Isaac, Ethan Hawke, May Calamawy… people who are really known for their work in the drama genre. So all together, we pushed a bit and that’s why the show looks different. But Marvel is smart enough to let us do that because they know it’s necessary. Once in a while, they need to do something different. As for the comics themselves, I didn’t know anything about it, but I think it’s an advantage.
I didn’t have the weight of anything from the comics. All I cared about was making it a good story. For example, with my wife Sarah, we pitched the idea of a new villain who only exists in the comics by name. In our series, he does something completely new and very close to our culture and Egyptian mythology.
Disney+ seems to be where the MCU tries new things. Do you think directing a Marvel series gave you more freedom than directing a Marvel movie?
I can’t compare because I didn’t make a film for them so I don’t know their artistic freedom but I can tell you one thing. Every time we do a TV series, it means we have more time so we can usually use it for the characters, to understand them, and to love them. I love it, especially when it comes to introducing a character. In a way, what Marvel did with Captain America in three films, we are able to do in a TV series. If all goes well, the next time you see Moon Knight in a movie or another series, you might think, “I’ve spent time with him. I know him very well, enough to go on an emotional adventure. with him now.”
There are many ideas to represent the fact that Steven Grant is not alone in his body. How did you work on the visual staging of his dissociative identity disorder in the series?
Speaking from my point of view, everything that is known about dissociative identity disorder comes from the movies. It was called multiple identity disorder. We’ve always seen it like that in movies with a good person and a bad person. But I think it’s much deeper than that. I learned a lot about the issue during the creation of the series.
