"Moon Knight" Head Writer Talks About Batman Comparisons And The Role Of Egyptology In The Series

On March 30, the first episode of Moon Knight, the new series produced by Marvel Studios based on one of the most beloved antiheroes of the House of Ideas, will arrive on the Disney+ streaming platform. Notably, this show is heavily inspired by the Indiana Jones franchise.
In Moon Knight, Steven Grant played by Oscar Isaac will discover he suffers from dissociative identity disorder (DID) and shares his body with mercenary Marc Spector, who leads him to embark on a journey towards a deadly mystery among the mighty Gods of Egypt.

Source: Marvel Studios

In the new issue of Empire Magazine dedicated to the show, series head writer Jeremy Slater explained that the creative team tried to "de-Wayne-ify" character Steven Grant - often portrayed as a playboy millionaire very similar to Bruce Wayne aka Batman - by turning him into a shy Egyptologist. For this reason, the crew has decided to focus more on the supernatural side of the Moon Knight comic stories.
According to Slater, the "Dark Knight vs Moon Knight" was never a comparison he was interested in making.
"Batman has an 80-year head start on us: you're not going to beat Batman at his own game. We've seen that side of Moon Knight as a playboy philanthropist, throwing moon-shaped boomerangs, flying around in a moon-shaped plane, but I don't think that's the coolest possible version of the character," he said.

Source: Marvel Studios/Warner Bros. Pictures

“There’s all this amazing stuff from Egyptology in the comics. Raiders of the Lost Ark was actually a big reference when I first pitched," the writer added. "How can we tell this dark, complex story but also inject some big, fun, supernatural, Amblin-style magic at the same time?”
Slater also revealed that Marvel Studios hired an Egyptology expert to expand the ideas behind the series by drawing on real-life studies of pyramids and Egyptian mythology.
“He told us all these crazy details," he shared. "Like, inside the Great Pyramid of Giza there’s a chamber that’s inaccessible, but large enough to contain the Statue of Liberty. And no one knows what’s in it. Those kinds of wild, real-life facts informed everything we wrote.”
Moon Knight is written by Jeremy Slater (The Umbrella Academy) and Beau DeMayo (The Witcher) and directed by Mohamed Diab, Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. The series stars Oscar Isaac as Steven Grant aka Marc Spector, Ethan Hawke as Arthur Harrow, May Calamawy as Layla, Gaspard Ulliel as Anton Mogart aka Midnight Man, Dina Shihab and Loic Mabanza.