Marvel Studios has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to their superhero characters that could carry their own films. The studio has done such a good job at fleshing out many of the supporting superhero characters in their films that fans are eager to see them strut their stuff by headlining their own features. But with the studio having announced their plans through 2019, it doesn’t look as if the studio is going to be capitalizing on that desire any time soon. And while fans are wondering if they’ll be seeing the likes of Black Widow, Hawkeye, Nick Fury or the Falcon (let alone the Hulk) in their own solo film, so are some of the actors who play those characters.
Speaking with Collider, Scarlett Johansson, Black Widow herself, certainly argued the case for a solo Black Widow movie –
I think that there’s room for a standalone movie. The character has a really rich origin story and I’ve been really fortunate to kind of place all these layers on top of one another and kind of build up this character to this point where I think I can now start to peel them away and reveal different sides of her and really focus on—I think I’ve been able to grow with the character, the character’s been able to grow with me.
Her dilemma that she faces it’s a deeply personal one, she has this great, huge, epic kind of calling and now is suddenly going, ‘Wait a minute. I have this epic calling, but I wanna make a choice for myself. I feel like I’ve put in the hours, I should be able to make active choices’ and she inevitably chooses the heroic path and kind of puts her own personal desires and needs aside. Those are things that kind of butt up against each other and interesting things happen when you have a character that’s pulled in many different directions and in my mind there’s room for plenty more Black Widow and certainly more—I think I could see her in a standalone film.
I’ve spoken to [Marvel Studios chief] Kevin [Feige] about it. I mean, of course, of course we’ve had that conversation before, and I think Kevin would also like to see a standalone film. I think I can speak for him and say that. That’s all, really. Right now I think this character is used well in this part of the universe, but I think that Kevin—I mean, we’ve talked about it and we both share similar vision for what could be a standalone series.
As we’ve seen before, although Marvel has a pretty strong sense as to where there films are heading story-wise, they do allow for some flexibility to those plans before they are announced. Johansson notes that plans for her character mutated (if we can use that word for a non-X-Men franchise character) as the public responded to her appearance in first Iron Man 2 and then The Avengers. It was her performance there, under writer/director Joss Whedon, known for writing strong, layered female characters, that lead her character to practically having second billing alongside Captain America (Chris Evans) for 2013’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
My contract has changed. Marvel and myself didn’t really know how the fans were gonna react to Black Widow the first time and how she was gonna be—they couldn’t anticipate how they would want to use her or if they would want to use her. I mean we invested in that character, but the audience had a great reaction to the character, which has been so awesome. For instance, I wasn’t contracted into doing Cap movies, but that storyline worked out so well I kind of branched off and I found myself in that standalone movie. My contract is kind of mutating, I guess [laughs] or morphed to fit the demand of the character.
Could that contract morph into one that includes a feature solo film? We’ll see.
