Marvel seeking actresses for lead in hard-boiled Netflix series
Marvel’s Netflix-exclusive plans (four original series building to a Defenders team miniseries) has already revealed (some of) its debut series, Daredevil. Now, casting is underway for the other series’ leads, Luke Cage, Iron Fist and Jessica Jones – the unconventional superheroine turned hard-boiled private eye.
Deadline reports that four actresses of note are up for the role of Jones: Krysten Ritter, Teresa Palmer, Alexandra Daddario and Jessica De Gouw.
Ritter has appeared on Breaking Bad and as the star of Don’t Trust The B**** In Apartment 23, while Daddario is a veteran of the Percy Jackson series who broke big with a scene-stealing turn in True Detective earlier this year. Palmer is a model-actress recently seen in the zombie romantic-comedy Warm Bodies and De Gouw has superheroine experience as The Huntress on Arrow.
One of the most modern (in terms of first appearance) major comic-book characters to become part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Jessica Jones was created by Brian Michael Bendis as the lead of the mature-audiences title Alias in 2001. Her backstory (which retroactively added her presence to key earlier events in Marvel continuity) frames Jones as a super-powered individual (radiation accident) who had a brief career as a superheroine called Jewel that ended after she was traumatized by a horrific encounter with the supervillain Purple Man.
Demoralized with the costumed life, she instead becomes a private-investigator working largely in and around the superhuman community. She subsequently began a relationship with Luke Cage (whose series is also now casting) which led to marriage and a child. Cage will reportedly appear as part of the Jones series before spinning-off into his own.
Source: Deadline Hollywood
