Unlike the various Marvel shows releasing on Disney+ this year, Hulu's upcoming adult animated series Marvel's M.O.D.O.K. is not set within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Rather, M.O.D.O.K. co-showrunner Jordan Blum says the show occupies its very own place in the Marvel multiverse. He even got to pick its designation.
"Yeah, we're our own universe," Blum told ComicBook.com. "I think like, you know, Harley Quinn is a good example of like, that's not the movies, but it's really cool actually. Marvel has like a database of all the universes in the multiverse, and there's a guy who runs it and they let me pick the numbering of our universe." According to Blum, M.O.D.O.K. takes place on Earth-1226, which is a reference to Dec. 26, his son's birthday.
All of Marvel Studios' mainline films -- as well as all of its live-action Disney+ shows -- take place in the MCU, which is designated as Earth-199999. The same can be said of most of the live-action television shows produced by the now-defunct Marvel Television. Despite Marvel Studios and Marvel Television going in different directions and the canonicity of the latter's productions being called into question as a result, shows like ABC's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Netflix's Daredevil, Freeform's Cloak & Dagger and Hulu's Runaways all still officially take place on Earth-199999 with the rest of the MCU, as Marvel has not created a separate designation for them.
Seeing as how it takes place in its own little corner of the multiverse, Hulu's M.O.D.O.K. appears to be more akin to Helstrom, a live-action Marvel show that premiered its first and only season on Hulu last year. Unlike Hulu's Runaways, which is set on Earth-199999, Helstrom takes place in its own universe, Earth-TRN836.
All that being said, while M.O.D.O.K. is set on Earth-1226 -- far away from the MCU -- Blum revealed that the people at Marvel Studios, including company president Kevin Feige, really like the show. So much so, in fact, that the M.O.D.O.K. team was told to continue working on the series even after Hulu's other planned animated Marvel projects like Howard the Duck and Tigra & Dazzler were canceled during development.
"They really dug it and were really happy with the creative, and I think they saw that we were very respectful of, you know, everything that'd come before it," Blum said. "They really just let us do our own thing, you know and I don't think we ever really got any notes or anything from them. They were just kinda like, 'This is working, keep going.'"
Marvel's M.O.D.O.K. stars Patton Oswalt as M.O.D.O.K., Aimee Garcia as Jodie, Ben Schwartz as Lou, Melissa Fumero as Melissa, Wendi McLendon-Covey as Monica Rappaccini, Beck Bennett as Austin Van Der Sleet, Jon Daly as Super Adaptoid and Sam Richardson as Gary. The series premieres May 21 on Hulu.
Source: ComicBook.com