Black Widow (2020)

At birth the Black Widow (aka Natasha Romanova) is given to the KGB, which grooms her to become its ultimate operative. When the U.S.S.R. breaks up, the government tries to kill her as the action moves to present-day New York, where she is a freelance operative.

Release date: November 6, 2020

Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Florence Pugh, Robert Downey Jr., Rachel Weisz, David Harbour

Given how much the landscape of the MCU changed with the events of Endgame and Marvel's apparent road map for their phase four, it feels like the moment has gone somewhat on commissioning this.

I would say the right time to do it would have been immediately after Civil War, the "T'Challa told Ross what you did" subplot was a perfectly viable premise for a solo Widow story.

This apparently won't now be released into the wild until the end of May 2021 which, not that I'm keeping tabs or anything, is more than a full year removed from the pre-Covid date of May gone. Consequently, Shang-Chi is moving from May to July and Eternals from February to November.

There has been polling in multiple countries showing that people are not comfortable going to see movies yet. This reluctance is particularly a problem for the big budget movies. For now, all the studios are just guessing at what the future of movies is going to look like.

Without explicitly saying it, they've pretty much acknowledged that the release of Mulan to Disney+ was a flop, although I don't think MCU fans would follow suit by skipping out on Black Widow were it given the same treatment.

Even as it stands, although this is of course a much longer delay, it's hard not to consider the timescale optimistic. It even seems somewhat speculative to assume movie theaters will still exist by then.

5 hours ago, Michael* said:

This apparently won't now be released into the wild until the end of May 2021 which, not that I'm keeping tabs or anything, is more than a full year removed from the pre-Covid date of May gone. Consequently, Shang-Chi is moving from May to July and Eternals from February to November.

I believe this is accurate 

I can't wait to see this movie, it's one of my favorite Marvel characters

On 9/24/2020 at 2:45 AM, Matt! said:

I believe this is accurate 

Yeah, in fairness the WandaVision trailer did rather huge numbers, so it looks like the demand is still there. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that.

6 hours ago, avensis said:

I can't wait to see this movie, it's one of my favorite Marvel characters

I must confess, I'm more excited for Widow now than I was when it was first announced. I don't know how much of that is just general scarcity of content, but I do quite like that it seemingly represents a shift from MCU continuity into perhaps more self-contained stories.

According to Scarlett Johansson, a Black Widow sequel may be possible, but it all depends on what Yelena brings to the public.

On 11/2/2020 at 11:39 PM, avensis said:

According to Scarlett Johansson, a Black Widow sequel may be possible, but it all depends on what Yelena brings to the public.

Yeah, the chances of getting a sequel would have been far clearer by this point had the initial release not been delayed, but between that and Marvel's longstanding reticence to even commission a solo Widow story, I must confess my expectations aren't particularly high. The best case scenario is probably that there's scope for Florence Pugh to appear elsewhere in the MCU.