About

Black Widow is an upcoming film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The film stars Scarlett Johansson, David Harbour, Florence Pugh and Rachel Weisz.

History

In April 2004, a film adaptation of the Marvel Comics character Black Widow began development. At the time, Lionsgate, the studio producing the film, announced that David Hayter, the writer of the first two X-Men film, would write and direct.^[1][2]

At the time, Hayter said, "I like that she crossed over into everybody else's comic book. She was the mysterious femme fatale in the story who did what was needed to be done and left."

In 2006, the rights to the character reverted back to Marvel Studios, who decided not to move forward with the film. David Hayter would later blame the commercial failures of several "female vigilante movies," naming BloodRayne, Ultraviolet and Aeon Flux.^[3]

In 2009, Scarlett Johansson signed on to play Black Widow and her alter-ego Natasha Romanoff in Iron Man 2. Johansson would go on to play the character in several Marvel films, including The Avengers and its three sequels.

Between 2014 and 2018, the studio would announce that the character would be getting a solo movie several times, particularly following the release of Avengers: Age of Ultron. In 2018, Marvel announced that Cate Shortland would be directing the film.^[4]

Delay

On March 17th, 2020, Disney announced that the film would be delayed indefinitely due to concerns over the COVID-19 coronavirus. ^[11]

Reception

Trailer Reception

On December 2nd, 2019, Marvel released a trailer of the film. Within two days, the video received more than 21 million views (shown below).

Following the release of the trailer, people commented on the trailer, focusing on the character Red Guardian (played by David Harbour). Twitter^[5] user @KWilsonHunte tweeted, "You either die a Hopper, or you live long enough to see yourself become a Smirnoff. #BlackWidow." The tweet received more than 2,100 likes and 600 retweets in less than 24 hours (shown below, left).

Throughout the week, others shared their thoughts on the trailer (examples below, center and right).

Online Presence

On April 27th, 2014, Redditor ChanKiM_ launched the /r/Blackwidow subreddit.^[6] As of December 2019, the subreddit has more than 1,100 subscribers.

The following year, September 7th, 2015, the Facebook ^[7] group blackwidowmovie launched. Within five years, the group garnered more than 4,000 likes

The film also has a large fanbase on Tumblr. On January 21st, 2014, the Tumblr^[8] page whereismyblackwidowmovie launched. Other Black Widow-specific Tumblr pages include widowsource^[9] and Fuck Yeah Black Widow.^[10]

Search Interest

External References