Marvel’s What If...? Creator Pitched Captain Marvel to Marvel Studios Before Landing Animated Series

Marvel's What If... is premiering on Disney+ this month week, and the official cast list was [...]

Marvel's What If... is premiering on Disney+ this month week, and the official cast list was released today and features nearly 50 stars from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. While there are many exciting actors on the line-up, some big names won't be included in the series, including Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man), Chris Evans (Captain America), Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow), Tom Holland (Spider-Man), and Brie Larson (Captain Marvel). While Larson won't be lending her voice to the project, the show does have an interesting Captain Marvel connection. In a press release shared by Disney earlier today, it was revealed that Marvel's What If...'s creator, AC Bradley, once pitched a Captain Marvel idea to Marvel Studios.

"AC Bradley, the writer on [Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia], had come in to pitch for 'Captain Marvel,' which didn't work out due to some other obligations, and producer Jonathan Schwartz recommended her for 'What If…?,'" executive producer Brad Winderbaum shared. "We brought her in and she understood what we wanted to do immediately. She came back and pitched this emotional character-focused version of the Captain Carter story."

"We'd get together and basically nerd out," shared director Bryan Andrews. "We had an embarrassment of riches in terms of characters, storylines, twists—the sky's the limit, really."

"We looked at the big moments of the MCU and thought about ways to twist them—that's where we started," Bradley added. "We came up with 30 loglines and pitched them to Kevin Feige. He picked 25 of them. That was big, because we knew we were on the right track. But then we had to narrow it down more, and eventually found our season."

Interestingly, Bradley is not the only person currently involved with Marvel that had a Captain Marvel idea that never came to fruition. Recently, ComicBook.com's Phase Zero podcast had the chance to chat with Black Widow writer Eric Pearson, and he shared that he once wrote a Captain Marvel script that was completely different from the 2019 film.

"I had a Captain Marvel screenplay that I wrote in the Marvel Writers Program that is 100% different than the version that that came out. But I remember a few years ago, I found a box of stuff and there was a couple of drafts of that, and I was like, 'I probably got to shred these,' or 'Is it okay?' And then I was thinking, 'What if someone found this?' There's just a lot of stuff out there. Sometimes people might find the exact right page that didn't get shredded or fell out of a, I don't know-," Pearson shared. "Yeah, there was no Thanos. There was no... I'm trying to think of what the villain was. I mean, it was Supreme Intelligence in some sort, but no, it was 100% different."

Marvel's What If... premieres on August 11th.

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