Marvel’s newest Disney+ series has acquired the two things every spy thriller needs: a pair of writers and a code name nobody is allowed to explain. Deadline reports that Amit Cohen and Ron Leshem have been hired to write Zodiac, the live-action show that Brad Winderbaum, who runs Marvel’s television, animation and comics operation, unveiled at New York Comic Con on 8 October. At the time he offered the crowd little more than “It’s a spy thriller” and a title card, adding that comics readers who studied the lettering closely would spot clues about where the show is heading. That is roughly as much as a studio can say before the man from legal starts tapping his watch.
The new detail is that the story follows a pair of spies chasing targets with special abilities. Production is due to begin in London in spring 2027, casting was set to start within weeks of the NYCC announcement, and the series is aimed at 2028. Marvel has not yet publicly confirmed the writing hires, so for now treat them as a very well-sourced rumour in a trench coat.
As choices go, Cohen and Leshem make a good deal of sense. Leshem co-created the original Israeli Euphoria, the one HBO later remade with Zendaya, and together the pair have written and produced a string of Israeli dramas, among them Trust No One, Bad Boy, 8200, Red Skies and Traitor, plus Hulu’s No Man’s Land, set amid the Syrian civil war. 8200 takes its name from Israel’s military signals intelligence unit, so they know their way around a surveillance van. It’s a more grown-up pedigree than Marvel’s last live-action dalliance with espionage, Secret Invasion, which achieved the remarkable feat of making shape-shifting alien infiltrators feel like a long committee meeting in a car park.
The title is the clue that really matters. In the comics, the Zodiac is a criminal cartel of twelve, each member taking a star-sign codename, who first troubled the Avengers in 1970 and have spent the half-century since being reinvented as gangsters, androids and international terrorists. Their Scorpio was eventually unmasked as Jake Fury, the embittered brother of Nick, which gives the group a direct line into the S.H.I.E.L.D. family album. A series about two spies hunting people with special abilities could therefore be a show about hunting the Zodiac, or one in which the Zodiac does the hunting. Either way, somebody in a Leo mask is getting a big monologue.
There’s something pleasingly old school about shooting it in London, too. British television more or less invented the stylish spy-fi caper with The Avengers, Danger Man and The Champions, the last of which was, after all, about three agents with special abilities, so any production staging superpowered tradecraft around the capital will be competing with the ghost of John Steed’s bowler. Marvel’s live-action television slate has thinned noticeably as older shows wind down, which leaves Zodiac carrying a fair bit of expectation for a series that does not yet have a single cast member. It’s a long wait until 2028, but the horoscope looks promising.
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