10 Dream MCU Projects Disney Will (Probably) Never Make

9. The ORIGINAL S.H.I.E.L.D.

Nick Fury Jim Steranko
Marvel Comics/Jim Steranko

This might be considered old news, given how keen Phase Two was to reiterate that S.H.I.E.L.D. no longer existed, but the outfit have remained an integral part of the Marvel mythos for decades all the same. Even ABC's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has managed to survive the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, coming into its own during its two most recent seasons.

However, while there's certainly a lot to admire about that series, and even the various other S.H.I.E.L.D. related storylines we've seen in the MCU to date, it's a sad fact that their most iconic period will never make it to the MCU - mainly for practical reasons.

Jim Steranko's S.H.I.E.L.D. books of the 1960s and '70s conjured the definitive image of Marvel's spy organisation, and with it Nick Fury as well. Marvel's original cigar-chomping super-spy may have been put out to pasture with the ascendance of Samuel L. Jackson's on-screen portrayal, but how amazing would it be to see a series - or film - about the original version's exploits alongside Dum Dum Dugan (serious!), Gabriel Jones, and La Contessa, just as it was in Jim Steranko's old comic?

Sadly, both because of the known MCU continuity and because there's really no point in introducing another Fury to complicate matters, a Cold War-era S.H.I.E.L.D. prequel will likely never happen. (That won't stop me from fan-casting Brad Pitt as the OG Fury though.)

Advertisement
Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.