Joss Whedon was at San Diego Comic-Con this weekend and spoke about the idea of making a Black Widow solo film with Scarlett Johansson. As a fun bonus, a Marvel panel revealed a never-before-seen MCU screentest he directed.
While The Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron were big hits at the box office, not everyone was a fan of where Whedon took Natasha's story in the sequel film. But if Marvel wanted him to lead her solo film (our own Donna Dickens suggests setting her up for a Bourne-like franchise), he'd be there.
Speaking to IGN.com at SDCC, the idea of Black Widow was broached once again:
“Well if somebody pointed to me and said, ‘You want to make a Black Widow movie?” the answer would be ‘Duh!” For two reasons: I think that character really is very interesting and very earthbound and so it”s the kind of action that I got to do less of with somebody like Thor or The Vision. When you get into your Superman territory it”s harder to maintain that sort of, the gritty action that the Russo brothers do so beautifully. And she”s got that kind of thing…and really do a spy thriller, like really do a good, paranoid sort of 'John LeCarré kind of on crack' sort of thing. That would be really fun. Also, Scarlett Johansson is just delightful. She works really hard, but she just spends most of her time cracking me up, so it would be a fun shoot.”
While Brie Larson was just announced to play Captain Marvel, that film will stand as the studio's first female-led superhero film. Their current slate also dictates we wouldn't get another one until at least 2020 so chances we'll get a Black Widow film are slim.
The creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer may have stepped away from the MCU but that doesn't mean he'd done with superpowered women. He recently said he'd be into directing a more down-to-earth superhero story like Jessica Jones.
In other Whedon-related news, Geek Girl Diva did a liveblog for us of the Agents of SHIELD panel at Comic-Con during which this screentest between Chloe Bennett and Brett Dalton debuted. It was actually directed by Whedon and at this point Bennett hadn't been cast yet. This was apparently how the two actors met.
Also here's a bonus FitzSimmons screentest.