Moe Lane

(Via @gabrielmalor.) Nice hunk of change, that: “Scarlett Johansson, who has appeared in six movies as Black Widow, is finally landing a $15 million payday for an upcoming stand-alone film centered on the Marvel superheroine, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.” This is Thor and Captain America-level cash; it also makes a good deal of sense, because I’m pretty sure that every person who reads this who also goes to movies in the theater will be planning to watch Black Widow acrobatically beat up a remarkable number of bad guys.

They’re also bringing back Ryan Coogler for Black Panther 2: “…Coogler’s camp shook off the peer pressure and took its time in making a deal, which occurred under the radar some time ago. Sources say the plan at this stage is for Coogler to write the script next year with an eye to start production in either late 2019 or early 2020.” To paraphrase somebody or other, the negotiations probably involved just how many dump trucks full of money Coogler would be getting.  ScarJo, Ryan, bubbelehs: your rule of thumb here should be all that the traffic will bear.  Make ’em make it rain.

It doesn’t quite work.

At birth the Black Widow (aka Natasha Romanova) is given to the KGB, which grooms her to become its ultimate operative. When the U.S.S.R. breaks up, the government tries to kill her as the action moves to present-day New York, where she is a freelance operative. The standalone film will find Romanoff living in the United States 15 years after the fall of the Soviet Union.

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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.

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Better by far that the Washington Post snapped her up.  Alyssa Rosenberg, on her positive reaction to The Avengers’ Black Widow character, and other people’s negative reactions to the same character’s development:

…ultimately that’s a great deal of what I want from my female action heroes: that they not be required to take off their femininity when they suit up for battle, and that they not be required to leave it hanging in the closet when they return from the wars. Certainly, there are some female characters for whom violence may be straightforward and have few other implications for their senses of self. But isn’t the whole point of having women as well as men be superheroes and swordfighters that they bring a new range of perspectives to our experiences of these very old stories?

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