Disney+ Cancels Major Marvel Show Over Budget Concerns

A Marvel TV show isn't getting a second season. Actress Tatiana Maslany, who portrays Jennifer Walters, aka She-Hulk, in She-Hulk: Attorney At Law, has shattered expectations of the Disney+ show returning.

In her appearance on streamer NerdIncorrect's Twitch game show Codenames Live (viewed by Polygon on Jan. 16, but now removed from Twitch's archive), the host asked Maslany, "Should we hope for a Season 2?"

"I don't think so," Maslany replied. "I think we blew our budget, and Disney was like, 'No thanks!'" Although the series' head writer, Jessica Gao, has said she has ideas for future seasons, and the final episode left the possibility open, Maslany's statement seems quite definitive. 

But if Disney has decided against any further She-Hulk on TV, it wouldn't be a surprise. Maslany hinted at the expense. She-Hulk was intended to be a modest comedy that softly spoofs a popular TV genre, legal drama, while also involving low- to mid-level superhero hijinks as well as some meta-comedy reminiscent of the character's comic book origins.

As a result of its special effects, budgets for episodes ballooned to $25 million, equal to a blockbuster movie, according to Variety. With a low-key, niche concept that had only a marginal impact on its release, that is a high price tag for a show.

As a result of Marvel Studios' script development and production processes, Variety reported that the studio's approaches proved unsuitable for the development of episodic television shows, resulting in rushed and unfinished visual effects that, considering the show's budget, could have been more impressive.

As the outlet reported, "In the original arc of She-Hulk, a flashback of star Tatiana Maslany's transformation into her Hulk character didn't take place until Episode 8, the penultimate episode."

After viewing the footage, Marvel's brain trust realized that it should have happened in the pilot episode so that audiences would learn more about the character's story early on. That meant that the postproduction team had to correct the mess.

"The so-called bad VFX we see was because of half-baked scripts," one person involved with She-Hulk told Variety. "That is not Victoria. That is Kevin. And even above Kevin. Those issues should be addressed in preproduction. The timeline is not allowing the Marvel executives to sit with the material."

She-Hulk may appear in future MCU movies, but Maslany is not working on anything now. "I've got nothing going on. You can find me on Instagram, not posting," she joked on the stream. "I've got no job."