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.
Studio president Kevin Feige has long been high on the character even before her role was expanded for April’s “Captain America: The Winter Soldier.” When promoting the homevideo release for “Iron Man 2,” in 2010, he said, “We’ve already started discussions with Scarlett (Johansson) about the idea of a solo movie and have begun putting together concepts, but ‘The Avengers’ comes first.”
But Feige is once again discussing the prospects for a Black Widow film now that “The Winter Soldier” is about to be released on April 4.
“We wanted to change the dynamic of the cinematic universe with this film,” Feige told Total Film magazine in a new interview about the “Captain America” sequel. “We wanted Cap and really the entire cinematic universe to be very different at the end of ‘Winter Soldier’ than it is at the beginning.”
According to Chris Evans, who plays Captain America, Black Widow’s storyline in “The Winter Soldier” revolves around “her coming to terms with her history, that she’s been a spy, and spies aren’t necessarily trustworthy,” he told Total Film.
That will be further explored in “The Avengers: Age of Ultron,” out in 2015. Film starts production in March.
“(Black) Widow’s part in that is very big,” Feige said. “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 comicbooks 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.”
It’s unclear whether Marvel hopes to have a Black Widow movie become part of its third phase of films, which so far includes “Ant-Man,” “Doctor Strange” and the third installments of “The Avengers” and “Captain America.”
Phase two includes “Iron Man 3,” “Thor: The Dark World,” “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “The Avengers: Age of Ultron.”