An alleged Marvel Studios insider recently put the blame on Kevin Feige for various problems with the She-Hulk: Attorney at Law Disney+ series, and specifically claimed the scripts were “half-baked.”
(L-R): Tatiana Maslany as Jennifer “Jen” Walters/She-Hulk and Jon Bass as Todd Phelps in Marvel Studios’ She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2022 MARVEL.
This insider’s accusation came as part of an exposé about numerous issues ailing Marvel Studios by Variety’s Tatiana Siegel.
The insider who reportedly was involved with She-Hulk: Attorney at Law told her, “The so-called bad VFX we see was because of half-baked scripts.”
“That is not Victoria. That is Kevin,” the insider accused. “And even above Kevin. Those issues should be addressed in preproduction. The timeline is not allowing the Marvel executives to sit with the material.
Tatiana Maslany as Jennifer “Jen” Walters/She-Hulk in Marvel Studios’ She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2022 MARVEL.
The idea that Marvel was working on half-baked scripts is not new. James Gunn implied as much when he announced his DC Studios slate back at the end of January.
As noted by Deadline, Gunn said, “People have become beholden to dates, to holding dates, to getting movies made no matter what. At the end of the day, I’m a writer at…heart, and we’re not going to be making movies before the screenplay is finished.”
Tatiana Maslany as Jennifer “Jen” Walters/She-Hulk in Marvel Studios’ She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2022 MARVEL.
He continued, “And if that means our plan has to shift a little bit–it’s going to happen, we know it’s going to happen…we’re not going to be making movies and putting hundreds of millions of dollars in a film where a screenplay is only two-thirds of the way done and we have to finish it while we’re making the movie.”
“I’ve seen it happen again and again, and it’s a mess. I think it’s the primary reason for the deterioration in the quality of films today versus 30 years ago,” he concluded.
(L-R): Mark Ruffalo as Smart Hulk / Bruce Banner and Tatiana Maslany as Jennifer “Jen” Walters/She-Hulk in Marvel Studios’ She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2022 MARVEL.
Viewers also picked up on the idea She-Hulk: Attorney at Law had a script and story problem. The Disney+ show had poor viewership when it first debuted with Nielsen reporting the series did not garner more than 395 million minutes the week it debuted on the streaming platform back in August 2022.
However, in the show’s second week it did make the Nielsen charts with 390 million minutes.
Based on total episodes & run time, it could be said She-Hulk did better viewership in its 2nd week.#Ahsoka‘s 3-episodes 133Mins total#SheHulk‘s 2-episodes 68Mins total.#Disney #DisneyPlus #StarWars #Marvel #MarvelStudios@wdwpro1 @ValliantRenegad @JonasJCampbell @KinelRyan pic.twitter.com/ASnob7gTvw
— MAC (@NowItsKnown) September 29, 2023
Not only did the show not garner a dedicated viewership, but audiences panned the series. It has a 5.3 out of 10 on IMDb with an unweighted mean of 4.7. The show received over 56,000 1 out of 10 ratings.
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law IMDb Rating
However, the scripts not being finished might not be the whole reason as to why viewers rejected the series. One of the main reasons might be how the show viewed Marvel fans.
Actress Tatiana Maslany told Variety in October 2022, “There’s so much resistance to a woman just existing in that space of superheroes. There’s always going to be that. I sort of anticipated it. It’s why I also feel it’s important. There’s such an entitlement to space held by certain people, and to even exist as She-Hulk is like a f**k-you, and I love that.”
The show’s head writer Jessica Gao also informed the outlet, “The fact that we were able to predict what the reaction was going to be, what a lot of the trolling comments were going to be, really shows how very tired and unoriginal these trolls are. That really tickled me because the little troll that lives inside of me really loves trolling the trolls.”
(L-R): Tatiana Maslany as She-Hulk/Jennifer “Jen” Walters, Ginger Gonzaga as Nikki Ramos, and Drew Matthews as Dennis Bukowski in Marvel Studios’ She-Hulk: Attorney At Law, exclusively on Disney+. Photo by Chuck Zlotnick. ©Marvel Studios 2022. All Rights Reserved.
Feige made it clear he supported this tone telling Entertainment Weekly, “She-Hulk, for example, was an experiment: ‘Let’s just do a legal comedy.’ What if Ally McBeal was a superhero? How do we do a legal sitcom with an incredibly expensive CG character in the middle of every episode? And I couldn’t be happier with the tone that Jessica Gao has set for that.”
“It’s a very different tone than many of other projects have, and that was totally intentional,” he added.
Tatiana Maslany as Jennifer “Jen” Walters/She-Hulk in Marvel Studios’ She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. ©Marvel Studios 2022. All Rights Reserved.
What do you make of this alleged Marvel insiders claim?
NEXT: They Claimed She-Hulk Was #1 — Now Nielsen Says It Didn’t Even Chart at All
