Kevin Feige Says Marvel is Committed to Black Widow Movie
Alright, alright. Yes, the internet hasspoken and it looks likely that Marvel will produce a stand-alone Black Widowfilm which should have happened ages ago.
However, there is one caveat. It won’t be
until after 2019…
With Scarlett Johansson's Natasha Romanoffback kicking ass on our screens in Captain America: Civil War and so talk has
naturally turned to the possibility of her getting her own stand-alone film. In
the past, there have been cagey talks about the possibility of a Black Widow
film but nothing had been confirmed.
But now Kevin Feige and his Marvel team
seem to be even more committed to making that a reality.
Talking to Deadline about Civil War and the
Marvel slate in general, Feige addressed the question, while specifying tha it
won't happen before the current run of films is complete in 2019.
"Where we go beyond that are ongoing
discussions that we’ll focus on in the next few years because we have a lot to
do before then," he says. "I would say certainly the one creatively
and emotionally that we are most committing to doing is Black Widow. We think
she’s an amazing character. We think Scarlett Johansson’s portrayal of her is
amazing. She’s a lead Avenger and has amazing stories in her own right to tell
that we think would be fun to turn into a stand-alone franchise.
“We think she’s an amazing character. Wethink Scarlett Johansson’s portrayal of her is amazing. She’s a lead Avenger
and has amazing stories in her own right to tell that we think would be fun to
turn into a stand-alone franchise.”
In a wide-ranging interview, Feige speakscandidly about the controversial casting of Tilda Swinton as The Ancient One in
Doctor Strange; addressing the criticism about ‘whitewashing’ he said:
“The casting of The Ancient One was a major
topic of conversation in the development and the creative process of the story.
We didn’t want to play into any of the stereotypes found in the comic books,
some of which go back as far as 50 years or more. We felt the idea of gender
swapping the role of The Ancient One was exciting. It opened up possibilities,
it was a fresh way into this old and very typical storyline. Why not make the
wisest bestower of knowledge in the universe to our heroes in the particular
film a woman instead of a man? We made changes to some of the other key
character in the comic for similar reasons. Specifically, casting Chiwetel
Ejiofor as Mordo and there’s a character named Wong, who is a very big part of
comics, and we cast this amazing Asian actor [Benedict Wong] and modernized
that role and his talents people will begin to see as materials on the film
begin to come out.
“The truth is, the conversation that’s takingplace around this is super-important. It’s something we are incredibly mindful
of. We cast Tilda out of a desire to subvert stereotypes, not feed into them. I
don’t know if you saw [Doctor Strange director] Scott Derrickson’s tweet the
other day. He said we’re listening and we’re learning, every day. That really
is true.”
As for the immediate future of Marvel,Feige shared a little about one character in particular, the Hulk, as played by
Mark Ruffalo, and the odds of the big green guy getting his own movie:
“Disney and Universal would need to come toan agreement to allow Marvel to do a stand-alone Hulk film for Disney. What’s
so great, and as you just said, Ruffalo lights up any room he’s in, any Twitter
feed he’s engaged in and any movie that he’s in. It’s just a great pleasure to
have him in The Avengers films and as you know his next appearance will be in
Thor: Ragnarok, which is a whole other type of fun Hulk adventure for him that
we can’t wait to get started on.”
