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Jessica Jones Has a Marvel Crime Novel So Why Not a TV Miniseries?

Marvel Crime's Breaking the Dark, a new Jessica Jones crime novel by Lisa Jewell, sounds like it would make a perfect series adaptation.


Jessica Jones is one of the most popular characters at Marvel, both in comics and in the three-season Netflix TV series starring Krysten Ritter playing the wounded, foul-mouthed ex-superheroine turned private detective to perfection. Created by Brian Michael Bendis, she enjoyed a long-running comic series before hitting the zeitgeist with her Netflix TV series but is now in TV limbo while often relegated to the occasional miniseries but is mostly a supporting character in any Marvel comic crossover storyline involving Hell's Kitchen in New York City. This week, she is the star of the first novel in the new Marvel Crime line of novels. This might have been announced months ago, but somehow, we missed it, so it's a bit of a surprise. What we wonder is, why isn't she getting at least a TV miniseries on Disney+? If there was ever a Marvel-Netflix character who deserved not only a return but her own spotlight, it's Jessica Jones. Here's a look at the official logline/overview that was released for Author Lisa Jewell's Breaking the Dark: A Jessica Jones Marvel Crime Novel – followed by our thoughts on how it could serve as the perfect basis for a streaming series return.

Jessica Jones Has a Mystery Novel Now? Why Not a TV Miniseries?
Krysten Ritter as "Jessica Jones": Marvel Studios/Netflix/Disney+

Breaking the Dark: A Jessica Jones Marvel Crime Novel

In her most imaginative novel yet, #1 New York Times bestselling British author Lisa Jewell (None of This Is Truelaunches the Marvel Crime series of thriller books for adults with an original story starring the private detective Jessica Jones.

"Meet Jessica Jones: Retired super hero, private investigator, loner. She tried her best to be a shiny spandex crimefighter, but that life only led to unspeakable trauma. Now she avoids that world altogether and works on surviving day-to-day in Hell's Kitchen, New York.

The morning a distraught mother comes into her office, Jessica would prefer to nurse her hangover and try to forget last night's poor choices. But something about Amber Randall's story strikes a chord with her. Amber is adamant that something happened to her teenage twins while they were visiting their father in the UK. The twins don't act like themselves, and they now have flawless skin, have lost their distinctive tics and habits, and keep talking about a girl named Belle. Amber insists her children have been replaced by something horrible, something "perfect."

Traveling to a small village in the British countryside, Jessica meets the mysterious Belle, who lives a curiously isolated life in an old farmhouse with a strange woman who claims to be her guardian. Can this unworldly teenager really be responsible for the Randall twins' new personas? Why does the strange little village of Barton Wallop seem to harbor dark energies and mysteries in its tight-knit community?

A mother's intuition is never wrong. And Jessica knows that nothing in life is perfect—not these kids, not her on-again, off-again relationship with Luke Cage, and certainly not Jessica herself. But even as she tries to buy into the idea that better days are ahead, Jessica Jones has seen all too clearly that behind every promise of perfection trails a dark, dangerous shadow.

Breaking the Dark, the first book in the brand-new Marvel Crime series introduces fans to a grittier, street-level side of the Marvel Universe. The series will continue with original novels featuring fan-favorite characters like Luke Cage, written by S.A. Cosby, and Daredevil, written by Alex Segura.

Jessica Jones Has a Mystery Novel Now? Why Not a TV Miniseries?
Cover art: Hyperion Avenue

That sounds like a perfectly solid plot for a six-part TV miniseries, doesn't it? Marvel Studios could serve itself well to keep an eye on this book adaptation-wise… especially if its serious about pushing its "Marvel Spotlight" banner. "Jessica Jones investigating the Midwich Cuckoos in an English village" is a perfectly good story for a standalone TV series and brings the character into they type of British crime procedural series that are all the rage on TV these days.

Breaking the Dark: A Jessica Jones Marvel Crime Novel is now available at bookstores. Jessica Jones is now streaming on Disney+.


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Adi TantimedhAbout Adi Tantimedh

Adi Tantimedh is a filmmaker, screenwriter and novelist. He wrote radio plays for the BBC Radio, “JLA: Age of Wonder” for DC Comics, “Blackshirt” for Moonstone Books, and “La Muse” for Big Head Press. Most recently, he wrote “Her Nightly Embrace”, “Her Beautiful Monster” and “Her Fugitive Heart”, a trilogy of novels featuring a British-Indian private eye published by Atria Books, a division Simon & Schuster.
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