SAN DIEGO — Scarlett Johansson would have happily ended her run as Avengers superspy Black Widow with her emotional and fatal finale in “Avengers: Endgame.”
But like any good secret agent, Johansson got sucked back into the game – again, very happily — for her own Marvel solo project “Black Widow” (in theaters May 1, 2020). Directed by Cate Shortland (“Lore”), the movie kicks off Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and had a primetime spot Saturday at Marvel’s Comic-Con presentation.
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Currently filming in London, “Black Widow” is “a mature step” in Marvel’s growing universe, Johansson tells USA TODAY. “Even though there’s a lot of different elements in some facets of the character to explore, I was happy with the work that I did. The only reason to do this film is really to elevate the genre in a way. It feels like the right time.”
Seen here in "Captain America: Civil War," Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) engages with other women who've gone through the Red Room assassin program in "Black Widow." (Photo: MARVEL STUDIOS)
Marvel showed a spy-tinged “Black Widow” trailer to the Comic-Con crowd that offered a glimpse at the ballet company/Black Widow program that trained Russian girls to be super-assassins, a “John Wick”-esque fight between Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff and her “sister” Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) that involves guns, knives and a shower curtain, and a throwdown between Natasha and debuting supervillain Taskmaster.
“It’s a remarkable, unique story,” Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige says of “Black Widow,” which is set after the events of 2016’s “Captain America: Civil War.” “People think they know everything there is to know about the Black Widow. I promise you they do not. We tapped into a period in her life that we’ve never explored before and how that affects her going forward.”
So far, those fights with Johansson have been “just amazing moments that I’ll think back to for the rest of my life,” Pugh said, who later admitted that her favorite Yelena character quirk is “how she does two ponytails instead of one.”
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