The new Disney+ series from Marvel Studios, She-Hulk, is in full swing. The show is based on the character created by Stan Lee and John Buscema and made her first appearance in 1980. But this is not the first time they tried to get a live-action version off the ground. Best Movies Never Made, the official Twitter handle for the podcast of the same name, recently posted pics about an unproduced She-Hulk movie from 1991.
The movie had planned to star six-foot model-turned-actress Brigitte Nielsen. She had made her film debut as the heroine in Red Sonja, a distant cousin of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Conan the Barbarian series (he shows up – but not as Conan). The tall framed actress went on to Rocky IV and Cobra, co-starring then-husband Sylvester Stallone. Her stature seemed like a perfect fit to portray Jennifer Walters, the cousin of Bruce Banner.
Her first appearance was actually supposed to be in the 1990 TV movie The Death of the Incredible Hulk, but that fell by the wayside along with ABC’s plans to give her a show of her own. New World Pictures, which actually seemed to be a cut below Cannon Films, had enlisted Larry Cohen, director of It’s Alive, to helm this movie. Unfortunately (or fortunately), the movie would not go beyond the promotional pictures posted on Twitter by Best Movies Never Made. Nielsen had fallen into obscurity before resurfacing in VH1’s The Surreal Life, where she began a romance with rapper Flavor Flav and recently made an appearance in Creed II as Ivan Drago’s estranged wife.
Here’s a taste of what Nielsen would have looked like as She-Hulk. Check out the rest of the images via the embedded tweet below!
It’s worth remembering that before the company became the juggernaut it is today, Marvel didn’t quite have as much luck adapting their properties to live-action in the past. Their now infamous 1990 Captain America movie was very much like a Cannon Film, and there was that TERRIBLE Fantastic Four movie that was never intended to be released. Their biggest successes came from TV, with 70s shows The Incredible Hulk lighting up primetime just as fellow comic adaptation (although different company), Wonder Woman, also did. Somehow we doubt She-Hulk would have made much of a difference for the comic company’s big-screen aspirations.
What do you think? Would it have been a cult classic today?