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‘She-Hulk: Attorney At Law’ creator Jessica Gao has revealed the plot of her rejected Black Widow movie. Based on the Marvel Comics featuring the character of the same name, She-Hulk is the eighth series in the MCU. Releasing on Disney+, the series follows Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany), a lawyer specializing in cases involving superhumans—who also happens to be the cousin of Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) and whose life becomes even more of a challenge when she becomes the green superhero, ‘She-Hulk’. Set to conclude on October 13, ‘She-Hulk’ is the last series of Phase Four of the MCU.
Phase Four kicked off in July 2021, with the release of Black Widow after multiple delays due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Serving as a prequel to fill in the gaps of Natasha Romanoff's MCU story, the film is set after the events of ‘Captain America: Civil War’ and follows Natasha on the run as she is forced to confront her past. This past largely centers on the found family she grew up with, before her and her sister were taken away by the Soviets to be trained as ‘Black Widow’ assassins. While a Black Widow film had been in development since 2004, it wasn't until Scarlett Johansson was cast in the role for several MCU films, beginning with Iron Man 2, that things began to get more serious. Cate Shortland was eventually hired to helm the solo film in 2018, but before that there were multiple iterations, including one pitched by She-Hulk creator Jessica Gao.
Now, Gao has revealed a basic synopsis for her version of the ‘Black Widow’ movie in an interview with The Wrap. Gao described the film as a Grosse Pointe Blank story, where, at a high school reunion, Natasha has to deal with the fallout that happened between her and her old classmates because they found out she had been planted there as a teenage Russian spy.
Black Widow wasn't the only film Gao pitched to Marvel. She also pitched her own versions of ‘Captain Marvel’ and ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’. While those ideas didn't work out, she did eventually land a pitch for ‘She-Hulk: Attorney at Law’.
