Marvel Is Now Putting On Live Concerts For Fans
In a first, Marvel will be putting on a live concert event connected with one of its upcoming MCU projects, a new venture for the franchise. There have been similar live concert events tied to movies in the past, such as the Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse live concert currently on tour throughout the U.S., but those have been for non-MCU projects. This new event is designed to allow audiences to engage with the MCU’s stories in new and expanding ways beyond just viewing television series and movies.
Disney has often put on concerts featuring non-MCU projects, from Pixar films to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, but now Marvel is hosting a Werewolf by Night concert.
While this will be the first time Marvel will be creating a live concert, it is part of the continuing project of broader audience engagement that includes Marvel-themed events on Disney cruises, at Disney theme parks, and at Disney and Universal parks globally. This new special event will be a presentation of Werewolf by Night, which will appear in two U.S. cities as a live concert. The special will be directed by Michael Giacchino, who is well known for his work as a film composer but has also directed for films, including the Star Trek: Short Treks episode “Ephraim and DOT.”
A Marvel concert with the score to Werewolf by Night being played alongside the film is a throwback to silent movies 100 years ago.
The Marvel Werewolf by Night concert will be premiering this month near Halloween, which seems appropriate timing and will play in Minnesota and Washington DC. The film is mostly in black and white and will be accompanied by a full orchestra, not unlike the way silent films were scored for live performances in the earliest days of cinema. As a film composer, Giacchino has been doing concerts like these for several years for many of the other films he has scored, including Star Trek and PIXAR movies.
The Marvel-produced horror film concert seemed appropriate for the spooky season, though it will take on more of an educational perspective in its first half. The show’s beginning will focus on demonstrating how music helps audiences engage with stories, particularly in horror cinema. It will cover old horror films and demonstrate how music has helped bring those films and their characters to life.
The second half of Marvel’s Werewolf by Night concert is something Giacchino calls “Werewolf By Night Live-to-Picture.” In this half of the performance, the orchestra will play the entire score of the film, along with the film itself playing on a screen. It will be like sitting in on a scoring session, though it will be the movie in its entirety and not one scene at a time, with no stops and starts.
Werewolf by Night, will be in black and white for the Marvel concert but will also have a colorized option on Disney+ starting October 20.
Michael Giacchino is excited to bring this Marvel project to a live concert format so that the project will not just be entirely on people’s TV screens. Since he has scored the Tom Holland Spider-Man trilogy, Thor: Love and Thunder, and Doctor Strange, it is also potentially possible that Giacchino could be bringing more of his Marvel work to this format, should this one prove to be a success.
Werewolf by Night is currently streaming on Disney+ and is mostly black and white, as it will be when Marvel shares it via the live concert event. On October 20, it will also be available on Disney+ in full color. The live concert events are set to take place near that date.
