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. Read Gao's full quote below:
"It was basically a 'Grosse Pointe Blank' story for Black Widow. Basically you find out that in high school, as a teenage spy/Russian agent, she was planted at an American high school, because she had to assassinate someone’s dad and then 20 years later, she goes back to the high school reunion and has to deal with the fallout of this fake identity where she betrayed all these people in high school."
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. Gao went on to explain in the aforementioned interview how she believes "that every opportunity you miss is actually setting you up for something else," specifically referring to her own story, saying, "I didn’t get any of those three Marvel movie jobs because it was building to this point."
While the average person would probably take rejection pretty hard and not want to keep trying again and again at the same place, Gao's story and outlook prove that her rejected pitches weren't a waste of time, but instead a chance for redirection. While the plot of her Black Widow film certainly sounds like it could've provided a unique perspective on Natasha's story, the MCU went in other directions. Luckily, with the first episode of Gao's successfully-pitched series just premiering, she's off to a solid start, with many critics' reviews praising She-Hulk for its charm and comedy. With Gao's history of persistence with Marvel, and now her success with She-Hulk, it wouldn't be surprising if she's already got ideas for another great MCU story to pitch to the studio in the near future.
Source: The Wrap