'Magic: The Gathering' Toon Not Dead, Starting Over At Netflix With Terry Matalas
There’s still magic in the air at Netflix after all
The scrapping of Netflix’s Magic: The Gathering animated series turns out not to entirely be the case. The series, now from Hasbro Entertainment and Wizards of the Coast, is now back in production. At least according to Deadline it is about to be, but the Netflix Geeked tweet about it said it is, so that’s trustworthy enough. Considering who the new showrunner is, it might be more clever to say it went through revisions. The current production team is led by showrunner Terry Matalas, who is concurrently showrunner on Marvel Studios’s Vision series at Disney+. The announcement was made during the streamer’s annual Geeked Week’s live in-person event Thursday night.
Now we can’t blame Brandon Routh, who had been cast as Gideon Jura in the previous iteration of the series, which told the stories of the Planeswalkers, the franchise’s unique magic-using heroes and villains. What he told Collider is absolutely correct, the version he was part of was scrapped. Which means the communications ceased. He was never going to get a call about any restarts on development or production, so he just told what he knew.
The original 2019 creative team had Joe and Anthony Russo as producers, with animation veteran Henry Gilroy and Jose Molina, who wrote two episodes of Agent Carter among dozens of shows where he was a writer and either co-executive producer or story editor over the past 25 years, as head writers. That team was replaced by one led by Jeff Kline in August 2021, whose history in kids TV animation is long and vast. With him were Transformers franchise veteran Nicole Dubuc as a writer, co-executive producer and story editor Steve Melching, supervising director Audu Paden, art director Izzy Medrano, and other writers Russell Sommer, Dan Frey, and Taneka Stotts. It is currently unknown if any of those who were under him made the jump despite his exit.
As previously reported, Matalas’s now-apparently concurrent showrunnerships come off of his most recent gig as showrunner for the third season of Star Trek: Picard. He was previously showrunner for Syfy’s 12 Monkeys series, which ran for four seasons, executive producer and showrunner of the MacGyver reboot’s fourth season and writer for Star Trek: Enterprise, Nightflyers, Nikita, and Terra Nova.
“It has been an absolute dream collaboration with Netflix, Hasbro Entertainment, Wizards of the Coast, and the brilliant Patrick Osborne to bring the many worlds of Magic: The Gathering to streaming,” Matalas said in a statement. “Those new to this sprawling saga will learn what millions of fans who play every day already know. Magic is the ultimate storytelling sandbox, brimming with iconic, complex characters, extraordinary mind-bending powers, and portals to every genre imaginable. It is also a powerful reminder that no matter what culture, country, or plane of existence you come from, we can all unite and become heroes together.”
Sources: Deadline, What’s On Netflix