Jessica Jones (TV series)

Premise

Following the tragic end of her brief superhero career, Jessica Jones tries to rebuild her life as a private investigator, dealing with cases involving people with remarkable abilities in New York City.

Cast and characters

Krysten Ritter as Jessica Jones:

A former superhero with superhuman strength and limited flight, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, who opens her own detective agency, Alias Investigations. Showrunner Melissa Rosenberg had Ritter on the top of her list for playing Jones, even when Rosenberg was developing the series for ABC. Marvel Television head Jeph Loeb noted that the character "has real problems with a number of things that she abuses! And we’re not shying away from that." Ritter described the character as "very rough around the edges, and dry and sarcastic and a total asshole sometimes. But I think at her core she’s a good person." She put on 10 pounds (4.5 kg) of muscle for the role. Elizabeth Cappuccino portrayed a young Jessica.

Mike Colter as Luke Cage:

A man with superhuman strength and unbreakable skin, whom Jones encounters in the course of an investigation. Colter put on 30 pounds (14 kg) of muscle for the role, and described the character as "a darker, grittier, more tangible character than Iron Man or Thor. He likes to keep things close to his chest, operate on the hush-hush." Colter was pleased and surprised that the audience "got" the character, as Luke "was a man of few words and a lot of subtext," which was refreshing: "we were going for this character in a way that said little but spoke volumes ... I felt people got the subtleties."

Rachael Taylor as Patricia "Trish" Walker:

A former model and child star known as "Patsy", Jones' adoptive sister and best friend who now works as a radio host. Jones' best friend was going to be Carol Danvers when Rosenberg was developing the series at ABC, and was changed to Walker due to the changing nature of the MCU and the fact that Danvers would feature in her own film. Rosenberg ultimately found this to be "much more appropriate ... it was better that [Jessica's] best friend was not someone with powers. It actually ends up being a really great mirror for her." Loeb said, "what’s most important is the relationship between [Walker] and Jessica, and how these two women who are [sisters] could be that different, and yet believe in the same kinds of things". Catherine Blades portrayed a young Trish.

Wil Traval as Will Simpson:

An NYPD sergeant who is very serious about his job. Traval felt that Simpson sees everything in "black and white" and that "justice can be served easily," an opposite to Jessica, who "deals in a world of gray" that causes the two to have friction between them. Traval described the character as "reinvented" and "reshaped" for the series from the one in the comics, as the comic character was "a little bit too hard to handle. [H]e was just a psychotic crazy guy."

Erin Moriarty as Hope Shlottman:

A student-athlete attending New York University who is a client of Alias Investigations. Moriarty called her character a "polar opposite" to Jessica Jones, describing Hope as "an all-American girl, [innocent and] really earnest". Over the course of the series, the two form a bond, with Jessica becoming protective of Hope, due to a shared experience they have with Kilgrave.

Eka Darville as Malcolm Ducasse:

Jones' neighbor who struggles with drug addiction, resulting in his personal journey intertwining with hers. Darville stated Malcolm was a new character for the series, though inspired by "seed characters" from the comics. He also felt playing the character with the drug addiction "was pretty intense and dark" and that Malcolm's relationship with Jessica "is like a flip-flop between victim and savior... much more [sibling-like] than anything else."

Carrie-Anne Moss as Jeri Hogarth:

An attorney and potentially powerful ally to Jones, who hires Jones for cases. The gender of the character was changed from male to female for the series, and the character was made a lesbian. Moss signed on to the series after reading the first two scripts, having been pitched the character by Loeb and Rosenberg. Moss described the character by saying that "she’s fierce, she’s strong, she’s powerful, and she likes that power." She worked "a few days every episode", which allowed her to grow the character throughout the series, while not knowing what the character would become as she played each moment, which she noted was how real-life is.

David Tennant as Kilgrave:

A man from Jones's past who can control minds. He was born Kevin Thompson and was experimented on as a young child, gaining his powers. Loeb called him "a terrible man who doesn’t see himself as terrible" and compared him to Vincent D'Onofrio's Wilson Fisk in Daredevil, saying, "there are going to be times [watching Daredevil] when you’re uncomfortable because you’re not quite rooting for Matt, you’re kind of rooting for Wilson, and it’s the same kind of thing you’re going to find in Jessica. There’s going to be moments where some of the things that she does is pretty questionable. And some of the things that, when you learn about Kilgrave’s character and the way that David Tennant plays that character, it’s really extraordinary." James Freedson-Jackson portrayed a young Kilgrave.

Season 2

The series was renewed for a second season of 13 episodes on January 17, 2016. It will film back-to-back with Marvel's The Defenders, with the potential for overlap between the two productions. In July 2016, Netflix COO Ted Sarandos stated that the season would not debut until 2018 at the earliest, after The Defenders released in 2017.

Development

In December 2010, Melissa Rosenberg was developing AKA Jessica Jones, based on the comic book series Alias. Centered on the character Jessica Jones, the series was developed for ABC under Rosenberg's new production banner Tall Girls Productions, along with ABC Studios and Marvel Television. The series was intended to air in 2011 of the 2011–12 television season, with Marvel Television head Jeph Loeb, Joe Quesada, Alan Fine, and Howard Klein as executive producers, and Alias writer Brian Michael Bendis as a consultant. At the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con International, Loeb said the series was "about a failed superhero who is rebuilding her life as a private detective in New York City,” and would include the characters Carol Danvers and Luke Cage. In November, Rosenberg said the show was now "hoping to get on the schedule for" 2012 of the 2012–13 television season, and added, "I love this character. That is an incredibly damaged, dark, complex female character that kicks ass... [she is] a former superhero with PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder." She also stated that, while Cage was a part of the series, the couple's daughter Danielle would appear "way down the road." Rosenberg said later in the month that the series would acknowledge the existence of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with references to Tony Stark and Stark Industries in the pilot script, but admitted that "As we go along things will alter in terms of what is made available to us, but we're definitely in that universe. We are in no way denying that that universe exists. And as much as I can I'm going to pull everything in from there that I can use". She also confirmed that Danvers would be a principal character in the series.

In May 2012, ABC president Paul Lee said the network had passed on the series. Later that year, Rosenberg was shopping the show around to other networks, saying "I don’t know if it’s an ABC show. It might be a cable show, really. The [Alias] graphic novel is the first one that Marvel did that was meant to serve an adult audience. I toned it down a little bit for network, but it’s very, very easy to translate that into cable. Very easy." In October 2013, Deadline reported that Marvel was preparing four drama series and a miniseries, totaling 60 episodes, to present to video on demand services and cable providers, with Netflix, Amazon, and WGN America expressing interest. A few weeks later, Marvel and Disney announced that Marvel Television and ABC Studios would provide Netflix with live action series centered around Jessica Jones, Daredevil, Iron Fist, and Luke Cage, leading up to a miniseries based on the Defenders. Rosenberg was brought on to write and produce the new incarnation of the series, to be reconfigured from her original project, which she called a "page one do-over" from her original vision. Liz Friedman also serves as an executive producer on the series. In December 2014, the official title was revealed to be Marvel's A.K.A. Jessica Jones. However, in June 2015, Marvel revealed that the title for the series would be shortened to Marvel's Jessica Jones. On why the title was shortened, Loeb said, "It literally just became one of those things that happens. We had talked about whether that was the best title for it, and that’s how it happened." Rosenberg added that the "AKA" is "living in the episodes. You'll still see it."

In January 2016, Netflix ordered a second season of 13 episodes. Raelle Tucker joined the series as an executive producer and writer for the second season, replacing Friedman, who departed the series to work on the pilot for the ABC series, Conviction.

Writing

Rosenberg talked about the freedom that the series had, saying that it would go "even further in all our storytelling" than what Brian Michael Bendis did in the Alias comic: "That's the beauty of working with Netflix. It's 13 [episodes]. There's no pilot and then getting feedback, reaction and ratings. You're in this bubble. So, what's the story you want to tell? Where do you want to go with [the characters]?" Expanding on this, Rosenberg said that "we start off with [Bendis'] incredible source material and Jessica Jones isn’t as well known in the universe obviously as Daredevil and everyone else, so it really allows for a lot of freedom in there. So there are restrictions in terms of the Marvel [Cinematic U]niverse of certain rules of mythology, but within that it’s free pass". Rosenberg noted that the final series is very different to the version she developed for ABC because of the different mythology of the MCU.

Rosenberg invited Bendis to the series' writers room early on in the writing process, so the writers could ask Bendis any questions about the character. He walked away from the meeting saying, "they were asking the right questions, and that's a good sign." Bendis also noted that Rosenberg was approaching the character and issues of rape and abuse differently to him, on which he said "I made the right choice for me as a writer then and they're making the right choice for them as writers now. I thought about how much is different and how much has changed, and if it's not brought up in Jessica, when will it be brought up? So I was like, 'Yeah, you should.' I thought that Melissa and the writers were the people to do that and that medium was better-suited to tell that kind of story."

Casting

In August 2014, Sarandos said the series was beginning to look "at casting Jessica." By November, Krysten Ritter, Alexandra Daddario, Teresa Palmer, Jessica De Gouw, and Marin Ireland were being tested for the role of Jessica Jones, with Ritter having been auditioning since October. Additionally, Lance Gross, Mike Colter, and Cleo Anthony were in contention for the role of Luke Cage, which was envisioned as a recurring role in the series before headlining Luke Cage. The next month, Ritter was cast as Jessica Jones. Ritter and Palmer had been the final candidates for the role, with both auditioning opposite Colter to test chemistry. Colter was confirmed as Luke Cage later in December.

In January 2015, David Tennant was cast as Kilgrave, and Rachael Taylor was cast as Patricia "Trish" Walker. The latter character was added to the series as a replacement for Danvers, as she was set to feature in her own film. A month later, Carrie-Ann Moss joined the cast, with her role revealed that October to be a female version of male comic book character Jeryn Hogarth. Also in February, Eka Darville, Erin Moriarty, and Wil Traval were cast as Malcolm Ducasse, Hope Shlottman, and Will Simpson, respectively. Ritter, Taylor, and Moss will return for the second season.

Costumes

Stephanie Maslansky returned as the costume designer for Jessica Jones from Daredevil, and was assisted on the first episode by Jenn Rogien, who crafted Jessica Jones' costume of leather jacket, faded jeans, and boots. Maslansky's fashion choices for each character were influenced by their comic incarnations, with her saying, "You really have to study your history of the original characters and see how they dress, how they were originally drawn, how they evolved through the years in these comics. And what you might discover is that, as illustrated, they kind of do wear the same thing all the time." Maslansky also stated that "everyone has a very specific look, and you can vary within that look, but it’s not over the top. It has to feel realistic and feel very grounded in this authentic reality we’ve created in Hell’s Kitchen." On Jones's costume, Maslansky said she "considers her clothing to be an armor and a shield and something that helps her maintain a distance from other people and privacy. It keeps her from having to deal with the rest of humanity in a certain sort of way." At least 10 versions of Jones's jacket were made, which started as an Acne Studios leather motorcycle jacket that had any "bells and whistles and any additional superfluous design details" removed, while 20 pairs of jeans were used, with both being aged and distressed.

Title sequence

The series' title sequence, created by Imaginary Forces, incorporates the jazz-style theme from composer Sean Callery mixed with artwork by David Mack, the cover artist for the original Alias comic, "taking [the viewer] around seedier, noir-esque corners of Hell’s Kitchen, as if through Jessica’s eyes".

Arisu Kashiwagi, lead designer at Imaginary Forces for the title sequence, was "inspired by all the changing activity and vignettes within those rows of windows [for New York-style buildings] — the patterns of light, color, narratives, and graphic silhouettes. It is pretty amazing how much you can see and the number of windows out there with wide open shades... I could understand our innate fascination with the rear window and that discomforting pleasure when catching a small sliver of a private act." She also looked to Edward Hopper's "Night Windows" and Gerhard Richter's paintings for reference. In order to differentiate the sequence from other painting-inspired ones, Kashiwagi chose to take "a more modern, abstract look while also embracing the spirit of David Mack’s watercolor paintings from" Alias. On the design concept, she added, "We based the concept off of Jessica’s PTSD and alcoholism, her blurry, unreliable point of view, and translated that visually using paint strokes that smear and obfuscate the scenes ... the scenes would appear only in small sections of the frame, either blocked by a foreground element or contained inside of a silhouetted framing device." Michelle Dougherty, creative director on the project, looked to the opening sequence of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window to help create the "voyeuristic approach" as well as "using the city as a character" to highlight "the dark places [and] the grit" where Jones investigates.

Filming

Filming for the series takes place in New York City, including areas of Brooklyn and Long Island City that still look like the old Hell’s Kitchen, Douglaston, Queens, as well as sound stage work. Manuel Billeter serves as director of photography for the series.

Visual effects

Visual effects for the series were completed by the New York studio Shade VFX, who also worked on Daredevil, with Bryan Goodwin serving as visual effects supervisor.

Music

At the 2015 San Diego Comic-Con International, Sean Callery revealed he was composing the music for the series. Callery did not begin composing the series' main theme until after reading two or three scripts, and did not see the opening graphics until after the second episode, at which point he had "a framework for a theme that [he] hoped would work". At this time, Callery said he started "fooling around" with ideas for the theme, and eventually settled on one that he felt had a "sneaky and fun-ness" quality, adding, Jessica Jones "has dry humor, a real edge to her. But there was something to this character that had a little whisker of playfulness in there, like a cat or something." After creating the theme, Callery began working on the rhythmic quality of it, eventually fully orchestrating his idea into what became the resulting opening theme. Regarding the electric guitar's entrance, Callery pointed out that it got "bigger there because as I looked at the graphics, the lights got a little more strobe-y. So that's when I decided the electric guitar might be a kind of neat add there so that the whole piece will arc a little more." A soundtrack album for the first season was released digitally on June 3, 2016. Jamie Forsyth also contributed to the music of the first season.

Marvel Cinematic Universe tie-ins

Jessica Jones is the second of the ordered Netflix series, after Daredevil, and was followed by Luke Cage, which will be followed by Marvel's Iron Fist, before leading into the miniseries, The Defenders. In November 2013, Disney CEO Bob Iger stated that, if the characters prove popular on Netflix, “It’s quite possible that they could become feature films," which Sarandos echoed in July 2015. In August 2014, Vincent D'Onofrio, who played Wilson Fisk in Daredevil, stated that after the "series stuff with Netflix", Marvel has "a bigger plan to branch out". In March 2015, Loeb spoke on the ability for the series to crossover with the MCU films and the ABC television series, saying, "It all exists in the same universe. As it is now, in the same way that our films started out as self-contained and then by the time we got to The Avengers, it became more practical for Captain America to do a little crossover into Thor 2 and for Bruce Banner to appear at the end of Iron Man 3. We have to earn that. The audience needs to understand who all of these characters are and what the world is before you then start co-mingling in terms of where it's going."

On specific crossovers with Daredevil, which had completed its first season by the time Jessica Jones began casting, Loeb said "they’re in the same area. In some cases they are in the same neighborhood. One of the things that is important to us is, when you enter the police station, it’s the same police station. When you go to the hospital, you start to see the same people. [But] we don’t want people suddenly going, "Wait, is that Matt Murdock that’s walking down the street?" Because that’s going to feel odd, and in a weird way feel false." On existing in the MCU, specifically in the same world as the other Netflix series, Rosenberg said, "Jessica Jones is a very, very different show than Daredevil. We exist in a cinematic universe, [and] the mythology of the universe is connected, but they look very different, tonally they’re very different… That was my one concern coming in: Am I going to have to fit into Daredevil or what’s come before? And the answer is no."

Release

Jessica Jones is available on the streaming service Netflix, in all territories where it is available, in Ultra HD 4K and high dynamic range (HDR). The first season was enhanced to be available in HDR after its initial release by post-production vendor Deluxe. The episodes for each season were released simultaneously, as opposed to a serialized format, to encourage binge-watching, a format which has been successful for other Netflix original series.

Marketing

Disney Consumer Products created a small line of products to cater to a more adult audience, given the show’s edgier tone. Paul Gitter, senior VP of Marvel Licensing for Disney Consumer Products explained that the focus would be more on teens and adults than very young people, with products at outlets like Hot Topic. Additionally, a Marvel Knights merchandise program was created to support the series, which creates new opportunities for individual product lines and collector focused products. Licensing partners wanted to pair up with Marvel, despite this not being a film project, given its previous successes.

Critical response

The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 93% approval rating with an average rating of 8.37/10 based on 57 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, "Jessica Jones builds a multifaceted drama around its engaging antihero, delivering what might be Marvel's strongest TV franchise to date." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 81 out of 100 based on 31 critics, indicating what the website considers to be "universal acclaim".

Accolades

In December 2015, IGN named Jessica Jones the best Netflix original programming series released to date.

Other media

In November 2015, an update for the mobile fighting game Marvel: Contest of Champions was released, featuring a six-part story quest involving Jessica Jones and Daredevil, along with a level based on Hell's Kitchen. Additionally, Jessica Jones was added to the role-playing game Marvel: Future Fight.