Paul Dini Joins Man of Action on ‘Ultimate Spider-Man’ Animated Series
While longtime scribe Brian Michael Bendis' involvement in Disney XD's upcoming "Ultimate Spider-Man" has seemed like a sure thing since the series' announcement back in April, thanks to Marvel Entertainment's head of TV Jeph Loeb, Bendis will be joined by an all-star cast of animation's biggest names including Paul Dini ("Batman: The Animated Series") and the Man of Action Studios ("Ben 10," "Generator Rex") team of Joe Casey, Joe Kelly, Duncan Rouleau and Steven T. Seagle .
In addition to serving as the series' creative consultant Dini will write the series' pilot episode. The Man of Action Crew will work as supervising producers, directing and editing the show's writing staff. Bendis will serve as a consulting producer, which should come as second nature considering his producer and writer experience from 2003's "Spider-Man" animated series, to say nothing of his decade writing the "Ultimate Spider-Man" and "Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man" comics and ithe 2005 Activision "Ultimate Spider-Man" video game.If this assemblage of creators seems like a full-on who's-who in comics and animation, it's by design. Loeb pretty much spelled the scenario out yesterday in Marvel's official press release: In an interview with MTV Splash Page earlier this week, Dini characterized the upcoming series as split 50/50 between adapting Bendis' comic stories and heading in a new direction and provided something of a breakdown of who would be handling what on the upcoming series:
"Ultimate Spider-Man" won't hit the airwaves until the fall of 2011, but given the staff behind it, fans have a much clearer picture of what kind of animated series awaits them a year from now. Now fans just have to wait to see whether or not the show's visuals will mirror Mark Bagley's or David Lafuente's signature character designs.