She-Hulk: Attorney at Law Head Writer Jessica Gao recently revealed that she pitched a Black Widow movie to Marvel Studios that involved Jennifer Walters. The studio pointed out that it felt like she was actually pitching a She-Hulk feature, and Gao was eventually given the chance to bring that character to the small screen in her own Disney+ series.
Talking to The Wrap, Gao elaborated on her Black Widow idea and revealed that the premise would have been Natasha Romanoff attending a high school reunion, confronting her past in the process.
"It was basically a 'Grosse Pointe Blank' story for Black Widow," she recalls. "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."
Gao didn't explain how Jennifer factored into that story, though we'd guess that she probably went to school with the undercover Natasha. Later, the writer confirmed that she also pitched ideas for Captain Marvel and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
"Each time, [Marvel Studios] got to know me more, I got to know them more," the writer added. "By the time I came into pitch 'She-Hulk,' I think they had a very good sense of what my sense of humor was. They had a good sense of what type of writer I was, what kind of story I built. They just had a very good indication of what I’m about. I think that that really helped sell it."
The Black Widow movie we eventually got was a little more serious than Gao's version sounds, though it could have been a lot of fun had the hero not been killed in Avengers: Endgame. A superhero returning to high school for a reunion is also a really clever premise, and one we'd love to see explored elsewhere in the MCU.
Would you have liked to see this take on Black Widow?