It’s finally official: the famed heroine, Black Widow, will get her own movie, according to TheWrap. Scarlett Johansson will be back to reprise her role as the Russian assassin in the first standalone film about the character since she first appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2010’s Iron Man 2.
Jac Schaeffer, a Black List screenwriter, is set to write the script for the untitled Black Widow film. For those of you who are unaware of what The Black List, it’s a compiled list of the best scripts of the year that didn’t end up being made into movies. Schaeffer’s script, titled The Shower, which was put on The Black List a few years ago, is now currently in development. It’s a female-centered science fiction action comedy (say that three times fast, I dare you) starring Anne Hathaway. A baby shower goes absolutely bonkers when a meteor shower rains down alien creatures upon a small town. Many Academy Award-winning films, such as Argo, Slumdog Millionaire, and The King’s Speech, were all on The Black List before being snatched up by industries interested in it.
Schaeffer is more known for her debut as a screenwriter and director with the film, TiMER, a fantasy/science fiction film where a timer determines your soul mate and where you’ll meet them. More recently, Schaeffer wrote the screenplay for the Pixar short, Olaf’s Frozen Adventure, which was featured before the animation studio’s latest film, Coco. Since Pixar is a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company, Schaeffer’s move to write the screenplay for the Black Widow makes sense, considering Marvel Studios is owned by Disney.
There’s no set release date for the untitled Black Widow movie as of yet. Marvel has a schedule jam-packed with titles already, with the first “phase” ending next year after Avengers: Infinity War — Part 2 comes out. That film will most likely feature the Black Widow in some capacity, especially since fans of the franchise already know that she’ll be in the first part of Infinity War as the trailer suggested.
Considering the delicate nature in which Marvel has built up to Infinity War, my best guess is that they won’t be rushing into anything that has to do with Black Widow just yet. President of Marvel Studios, Kevin Feige, even said back in 2016 that his organization and Disney were dedicated to bringing a Black Widow movie to their audience. So, now, it’s just a matter of gathering the necessary resources to get the ball moving.
