As I’ve noted before, the lack of a Black Widow movie stands out as rather odd, considering it’s basically a license for Marvel to print money by just about every line of Hollywood logic. And Marvel now appears to be in full spin mode as the criticism mounts.
Nicole Perlman, who wrote Guardians of the Galaxy, confirmed two things: One, that she wrote a Black Widow treatment, and two, that Marvel’s sitting on it.
This is generally where somebody shows up to argue that Marvel has a brilliant master story laid out and that they can’t disrupt it for anything, and honestly, it’s a total steaming load. Marvel can make any movie they want in any order they want to make it. They just proved that by making Guardians of the Galaxy, which has little to do with the Marvel Cinematic Universe at large beyond a few cameos, and those cameos were actually the worst thing about the movie.
Furthermore, they can change their plans any time they want to. This isn’t a TV series; movies are supposed to stand alone in the first place. Kevin Feige may have a rough outline through 2028, but you can bet that plan now isn’t going to resemble what Marvel actually does.
This isn’t even really about diversity, it’s about honesty. There are various financial reasons Marvel isn’t making a Black Widow movie right now, the most basic being they’d have to pay Scarlett Johansson dumptrucks of money, and Marvel is extremely cheap when it comes to salaries. It would just be nice, for once, for a studio to admit that.
That said, at this rate, both Sony and DC are going to beat Marvel to this particular milestone. Get on the stick, guys.
Via The Mary Sue