First set photos from Marvel's Inhumans TV show reveal a massive fake bulldog

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For years, Marvel Studios planned to introduce its royal family of Inhumans on the big screen in a movie. But now Inhumans has become an ABC television show, and the first photos from the set have revealed how the production is handling one of its most unconventional characters.

See that huge, blue, four-legged statue? That’s a stand-in for Lockjaw, a 2,000 pound, four-foot bulldog-looking creature that serves as the royal family’s teleporter. As you might expect, that character will be created using CGI for the actual show. In the comics, Lockjaw can teleport the Inhumans to Earth, and these set photos - which also include our first look at Anson Mount in costume as Black Bolt - seem to indicate that he’s bringing them to our planet in the TV show as well. (I know Starbucks are everywhere, but I doubt they’ve expanded to space yet.)

This project has a bit of a complicated backstory. A couple of years ago, there was a rift within Marvel between the film and television divisions, and it ended with Marvel Studios president and mega-producer Kevin Feige no longer having to answer to the company’s notoriously stingy CEO Ike Perlmutter. Perlmutter continues to oversee development on the TV side of the equation, but in the fallout, Feige and the film side have drawn a clearer line between what they’re doing in movies and the stuff that’s happening on TV. When Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. introduced the concept of Terrigen Mists into the show (a key aspect of the Inhumans’ origins), Marvel Studios took its Inhumans movie off the release schedule, and the TV side ultimately snatched it up.

But the show will end up having the best of both worlds: it’s a TV show, but it’s also the first one to debut in IMAX theaters. The first two episodes are being shot with IMAX cameras and will hit theaters on September 1, 2017, before the show begins its eight-episode run on ABC starting on September 26, 2017. Are you excited about Inhumans? Let us know below.

Image: Marvel Comics

Ben Pearson
Ben Pearson
Ben is an entertainment journalist who has written about movies online for nearly a decade. He loves the Fast & Furious franchise, prefers Indiana Jones to Star Wars, and will defend the ending of Lost until his dying day. He shook Bill Murray's hand once (so he's got that going for him, which is nice). Ben lives in Los Angeles with his wife.