AKA Jessica Jones will fall in the Marvel Universe

Jessica Jones was once known as Jewel, a crime fighting hero in the Marvel universe, sharing space with the likes of Spider-Man, Iron Man, the Hulk and other well known super heros.

Now she’s given up the cape and gone into business as a private investigator, only to find that getting out of the whole super hero thing is tougher than she thought.

She finds herself working on cases that frequently involve super heroes from the broader Marvel universe, and this is essentially the challenge for the upcoming television show: not all those heroes can be used, since other entities own the television rights to the characters.

Spider-Man, for example, is currently owned by Columbia Pictures.

Luckily, since the acquisition of Marvel by Disney, both ABC and Marvel are owned by the same parent company, so all of the characters currently still owned by Marvel are at least a possibility.

However, that doesn’t mean Disney will want the characters to cross over too much, since the Marvel Film Universe has been very lucrative so far, and they wouldn’t want to take the chance of diluting the characters.

This means that we probably won't see Iron Man or Black Widow actually appear on the television show - but they are free to explore some of the minor Marvel characters alongside newly created personalities for the show.

Clearly, whenever possible, the show will attempt to draw directly from those films. It will exist in the same story world as the films, so events there will affect the plot of AKA Jessica Jones, even if the characters are unlikely to appear directly.

"As we go along things will alter in terms of what is made available to us, but we’re definitely in that universe," Melissa Rosenberg told Hitfix during a recent interview about the release of Breaking Dawn, Part 1, which she co-wrote. "... And as much as I can, I’m going to pull everything in from there that I can use." Rosenberg went on to confirm that Tony Stark and Stark Industries will be integral to the plot of the pilot.

AKA Jessica Jones - Alias will be part of the ABC fall pilot season if it gets picked up. Unfortunately, this is not yet a sure thing. Confirmation may arrive early next year when the major networks start rounding up their pilots.