SPOILER WARNING:
Fact: The title event comes out of left field at the last minute.
Fact: There had been announcements (in magazines such as Comics Scene and Amazing Heroes) that, as the two preceding TV-movies had featured adaptations of Marvel characters Thor and Daredevil respectively, this one was going to include a version of their She-Hulk.
Fact: The character of Jasmin/Yasmin (?) bears an unmistakable resemblance to Marvel Comics' Black Widow (at least unmistakable to anyone familiar with both; her "real" name has been changed [from Natasha Romanoff {sp?}] with no "code" name given at all, and her husband has been replaced with her sister; but these are superficialities and otherwise Jasmine is closer to the comic book Widow than the first film's aforementioned version of Thor was to his admitted basis).
So it appears that this script was rewritten multiple times:
She-Hulk is removed; Black Widow is added; BW is changed to non-licensed character Jasmin; the title is changed and the event indicated by the new one is added.
That comes to four changes. Since the idea was to have an additional Marvel character in each of these movies, She-Hulk was almost certainly directly replaced with Black Widow, reducing the number of potential rewrites to three. As the elimination of BW is in name only and therefore hastily done, it and the addition of the "Death" were almost certainly done in the same last-minute rush job, so that there did not have to be more than two rewrites. I believe the person who submitted the "Trivia" note for this movie claiming that the set of the death scene was initially preserved until the diagnosis of Bill Bixby's terminal cancer put an end to all plans is an assumption born out of confusion. I submit that the truth here is as follows:
After the script underwent a massive rewrite to replace She-Hulk with the Black Widow and there was as yet no decision made as to whether S-H or Iron Man would be used in the next entry, another decision was made--for whatever reason--that this would be the last movie in this series. This in turn led to decisions to feature no other Marvel character here and to kill off the lead. Given how minimal the rewrite to eliminate BW and add the death was (suggesting that the production team had very little time in which to do it and therefore was probably caught by surprise), the cancellation must have been from either the network, the studio (New World)'s upper executives, or just maybe Marvel itself. Does anybody know just when Bixby's cancer was initially diagnosed? Please note that there can be a big difference between when a celebrity is diagnosed with a serious condition and when it is announced to the public, and mind you it wasn't necessarily thought terminal at first. I can imagine the insurance company, after learning of star/director/co-producer Bixby's illness, saying something like, "Well it's too late for us to back out of this third one, but we won't give coverage for any more of these." As a precedent of sorts (for one thing, it happened a few years later) is Robert Urich's syndicated Western series, The Lazarus Man. It was cancelled because the policy holders required a prohibitive increase in premiums due to Urich's medical condition, even though it appeared to be in complete remission.
I submit that the person responsible for the previously mentioned "Trivia" note had heard that a fourth Hulk movie had been intended, assumed that it was planned to have followed what was actually filmed here and consequently assumed that the death scene set would have to have been saved. But #4 was actually scrapped before this was shot, and the script for this altered because of that decision. Any thoughts? Any documentation?
UPDATE on 1 August 2009: Further research, inspired by the discussion thread "Iron Man appearance" on this board, revealed the following;
1. As of early July 1989 (Comics Scene #9, October 1989, the "Comics Screen" listings) the third Hulk telefilm was firmly expected to air that fall and to feature She-Hulk, while the alternatives of a subsequent Hulk movie or a solo film were under consideration for Iron Man.
2. As of 10 July 1990 (Comics Scene #15, October 1990, same department) a fourth Hulk movie, Revenge..., was being scripted. No Marvel co-star was mentioned (both Iron Man--with Stuart [Re-Animator] Gordon touted as director--and She-Hulk were being developed for their own films at this point).
The second point there would seem to be highly consistent with the Trivia note about saving the final scene's set. However, at a point when there was no chance Bixby would be able to do it, the actor himself announced that he would be starring in sporadic TV movies reviving another one of his old series, The Magician. This was certainly something arranged to make Bixby think his cancer wasn't as serious as it actually was, and not a genuine project. Could the same thing have been the point of announcing that a fourth Hulk script was being written? Point 1 intensifies the problems with Death... itself, as it indicates that the film was postponed in order to remove the She-Hulk. And would they have so openly admitted that Iron Man was under consideration to appear in a fourth or fifth entry (the cited statement about him is phrased that ambiguously) if at that time the third film was planned to appear to be the end of the series? I think not. So while I freely admit that the person who submitted the Trivia note about the death scene's set being saved MUST be let off the hook that I previously placed him on (although he is probably the victim of a disinformation campaign, so to speak), everything else stands as demanding answers to questions.
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