It looks like Marvel Studios was paying close attention when The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, The Heat, and Gravity crushed it at the box office in 2013. I know, I know: What do a film adaptation of a YA dystopian novel, a police buddy comedy, and a visually groundbreaking drama have in common? Well, all three are female-fronted movies and all three made mega-bucks at the theater, at a time when studio executives are still inexplicably bamboozled when female-fronted movies make mega-bucks at the theater. So it’s not shocking (but still a little surprising) that those lady-friendly films coupled with the outrageous success of The Avengers has caused Marvel to start thinking very seriously about giving Scarlett Johansson her own Black Widow movie. Back in 2010, Marvel boss Kevin Feige said they’d “started discussing” a Black Widow film with ScarJo. In 2011, he said there were no “definitive plans” but that they film “could be” a possibility. But now Variety is reporting that the Black Widow solo film is actually a thing that’s going to happen:
Marvel Studios is developing a film that would revolve around Black Widow, the character played by Scarlett Johansson in the “Iron Man” and The Avengers franchises.But wait! It gets better! Black Widow has way more than a bit part Captain America: The Winter Solider. According to Cap himself, it’s about:
[Black Widow] coming to terms with her history, that she’s been a spy, and spies aren’t necessarily trustworthy.And when The Avengers: Age of Ultron hits theaters:
Widow’s part in that is very big. We learn more about her past and learn more about where she came from and how she became in that film. The notion of exploring that even further in her own film would be great, and we have some development work with that. When we meet the Avengers at the top of Age of Ultron, it’s a very different landscape than we left them at the end of the first film. Partially, that’s because we love the rhythm that the comic books have developed – each of the characters appear in their runs, occasionally they get together for a big event or crossover series, they part again, and then they come back together again.Yeah, that’s right: Unlike the new Wonder Woman franchise which will be born out of a small role written and directed by a guy that is notoriously terrible at writing female action heroes, Black Widows film will grow out of a layered, complicated, fleshed-out-on-screen back story written and directed by Joss “the Vampire Slayer” Whedon. (Bet ya wish you’d taken him up on his Wonder Woman script now, huh DC?)
Color me ecstatic!
How do you feel about the possibility of a Black Widow movie?
