Marvel fans have been hankering for Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow to have a standalone movie for years—and it looks like their dreams might finally come true.
The studio hired screenwriter Jac Schaeffer to write a script for the still-untitled film, Variety reported on Wednesday.
It’s in super early development stages—and there’s no formal greenlight—but getting a writer on board is the biggest move Marvel has made on a Black Widow film so far. It’s also another signal that the Marvel Cinematic Universe might finally be turning to its female heroes; Captain Marvel’s standalone film with Brie Larson in the title role, to open next year, will be the first.
The Black Widow project will be Schaeffer’s first time working with Marvel. She wrote the Disney short “Olaf’s Frozen Adventure” and Nasty Women, an upcoming female-centered comedy based on Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and starring Anne Hathaway.
Johansson first appeared as the Black Widow eight years ago in Iron Man 2, and she’ll play the character in Avengers: Infinity War this summer. Back in October, she told Variety she thought time might be running out for her to don the character’s skin-tight catsuit—but she was hopeful for the film to become a reality.
“I think there’s a lot of opportunity to mine that storyline,” she said at the time.
Marvel has already announced its slate of films through 2019, so the Black Widow movie is likely to a few years out—and part of a new chapter of the MCU.
H/T the Verge
