Alternate title: Marvel tacitly concedes Black Widow will survive Infinity War.
Marvel is finally pushing ahead with the highly anticipated “Black Widow” standalone movie starring Scarlett Johansson, with Jac Schaeffer penning the script.
Sources say this is still very early development, as the film has no greenlight, but naming a writer is the closest the studio has come to moving forward on a standalone pic. Marvel President Kevin Feige met with several candidates before tapping Schaeffer, and Marvel execs met with Johansson to discuss what they wanted from a “Black Widow” writer.
I’d watch a Black Widow spy thriller, sure. I mean, I watched Captain America: The Winter Soldier, didn’t I? Scarlett Johansson was so good in that movie, I want to go watch it again now. I will happily watch a loving homage to the classic hard-boiled spy genre as seen through the superhero lens; Marvel is proving to be rather good at serving stuff like that up. Heck, it’s their blessed Secret Sauce at this point.
Moe Lane
PS: Don’t know a single thing about Jac Schaeffer, but the MCU is pretty top-heavy with people who I’d never really heard of before they put together a hit movie. The MCU also does seem to have a lot of directors with screenwriting credits, too — so she might end up directing, at that. I guess we’ll see.
Question: Did it take Wonder Woman being a smash hit to realize a female superhero movie COULD work, provided it’s done right?
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Question 2: Why did they think ScarJo couldn’t carry this movie YEARS ago?
Marvel’s already got a Carol Danvers (the female human Captain Marvel) movie on the list. So Wonder Woman didn’t cause them to reevaluate their stance with regards to female superhero leads.
No clue why it’s taken them this long to do a Black Widow movie.
I recall a flurry of buzz when that went on the MCU roster. OTOH, they haven’t really made it a priority movie either. I suspect that WW being a hit had more than a little influence on their opinion of the viability of female-fronted superhero movies.
It’s not a priority right now because it’s not part of the Infinity Gauntlet storyline. The story will apparently introduce the Skrulls, and the Kree will likely be in it as well. That adds more galactic politics elements that don’t really match up with the Infinity War stuff.
Plus, the Avengers are probably going to be undergoing a major reshuffle after Infinity War. IIRC, Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans are both interested in stepping away from their characters (Evans in particular wants to move to directing). I suspect that some of the other actors are interested in doing the same. If some holes open up in the Avengers roster, then new characters are going to be needed to fill those holes. And Carol Danvers is one of the leading candidates for that job.
So it makes sense to me that they’re saving her for later.