Production

On February 12, 2014, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige revealed that some developmental groundwork has been done on a possible movie featuring Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow.

"We start filming the next Avengers film at the end of March," Feige said in a February 2014 interview to Total Film. "[Black] Widow's part in that is very big. We learn more about her past and learn more about where she came from and how she became in that film. The notion of exploring that even further in her own film would be great, and we have some development work with that."

However, on March 17, 2014, Kevin Feige recanted his statements in an interview with Examiner.com, citing that she has been involved in three movies already and another character (Ms. Marvel) might be more interesting.

In August 2014, British director Neil Marshall told Vanity Fair in an interview that he wants to direct the film.

While at the Fan Expo on August 31, 2014, Stan Lee revealed that the film may be moving forward.

In an interview with Collider, Johansson revealed that she and Feige have discussed a series of standalone Black Widow films for Marvel.

Natalia Alianovna Romanova, (Russian: Наталья Альяновна "Наташа" Романова; alias: Natasha Romanoff; Russian: Наташа Романофф), colloquial: Black Widow (Russian: Чёрная Вдова; transliterated Chyornaya Vdova) is a fictional superhero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by editor and plotter Stan Lee, scripter Don Rico, and artist Don Heck, the character debuted in Tales of Suspense #52 (April 1964). The character was introduced as a Russian spy, an antagonist of the superhero Iron Man. She later defected to the United States, becoming an agent of the fictional spy agency S.H.I.E.L.D., and a member of the superhero team the Avengers.

Scarlett Johansson portrayed the character in the films Iron Man 2 (2010), The Avengers (2012), Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), Captain America: Civil War (2016), Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and the Untitled Avengers film (2019) as a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise.