Day by day, we’re beginning to form a better understanding of Marvel’s nascent Black Widow movie.
It currently has Jac Schaeffer on script duties and is said to be targeting a release in 2020, where it will presumably join Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and a third, as-yet-unrevealed Phase 4 movie.
So far, so good. But as Infinity War draws near, and most of Marvel’s high-ranking figures begin talking to the press, it’s fair to say that the rumor mill has been operating at full tilt.
Case in point: That Hashtag Show has seemingly located some scraps of intel pertaining to the standalone Black Widow movie, including how it’ll be angled as a pre-Iron Man 2 prequel involving the Winter Soldier.
The film will find Natasha living in the United States 15 years after the fall of the Soviet Union! That timeline places the film firmly in the mid-2000s, meaning we’ll meet up with Nat prior to the events of Iron Man 2. That time frame opens up plenty of options, and while many fans seem to want a Black Widow/Hawkeye team up in Budapest, we’ve been told that early discussions about the film involved Sebastian Stan’s Winter Soldier.
Given her Russian roots and longstanding relationship with Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye, a Black Widow prequel movie certainly makes a lot of sense on paper – the question, really, is whether Marvel Studios can secure Renner, Sebastian Stan and, perhaps most important of all, Scarlett Johansson, for a trip back in time.
Captain Marvel is treading a similar path, though we understand Carol Danvers’ origin tale will primarily take place in the 1990s, before she’s ultimately drafted into Earth’s Mightiest Heroes in time for Avengers 4.
As for Black Widow, we’ll be keeping a close eye on this female-fronted Marvel project as it begins to coalesce – with or without the Winter Soldier.