She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, starring Jessica Gao, premiered on Disney+ to rave reviews and has put Marvel Studios on the map. Fans and reviewers alike are laughing it up over the new superhero series’ witty dialogue, snappy editing, and unique take on the genre. Tatiana Maslany’s portrayal of Jennifer Walters is hilarious; she jokes about the show’s conventions (a la Fleabag) and she keeps her temper under control.
Many have wondered why Gao hasn’t been involved in any other Marvel projects; however, in a recent interview with The Wrap, the Rick and Morty alum revealed details about her Black Widow pitch and that she was turned down for multiple projects by the studio, starting a long-running joke between her and Marvel head Kevin Feige. After being killed off in the MCU, Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow finally got her own movie.
The film’s release date falls between Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s timeline. Finally, we meet Natasha’s long-lost Russian family: Red Guardian/Alexei Shostakov (David Harbour), Melina Vostokoff (Rachel Weiz), and Yelena Belova (Olga Kurylenko) (Florence Pugh). Gao called her proposal a “Grosse Pointe Blank for Black Widow.” In the 1997 film, “Ten,” starring John Cusack, a spy is sent on a mission to his high school reunion. Gao, who took inspiration for her proposal from the narrative, provided a top-level summary of the plot, saying, “Basically you find out that in high school, as a teenage spy/Russian agent, she was put at an American high school, because she had to murder someone’s dad.” Twenty years later, she returns to her alma mater to face the consequences of her high school betrayal through her use of a false identity.
The She-Hulk writer also disclosed that she had a meeting with the studio about other projects, including Captain Marvel and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, both of which went on to be directed by the teams of Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck and Destin Daniel Cretton, respectively. But according to Gao, all that happened was that she finally caught She-Hulk. She continued to explain that whenever she went to make a pitch, “it was like, ‘Oh hey, what’s up? When do you usually reject me every year? Cool.
As in, “Since you turned me down, what have you been doing?” The effect was just to make the space cosier. Marvel officials got a “really good understanding” of Gao’s sense of humour through this joke. There’s little doubt that this influences the show’s portrayal of the She-Hulk and her other cast members. On August 25th, the second episode of She-Hulk will be released.