For years now, people have been loudly wondering why someone, somewhere, won’t give Scarlett Johansson’s immensely popular Black Widow character her own film. (Oddly enough, the people asking this have included the increasingly successful Russo brothers, and Marvel Studios’ Kevin Feige, either of whom you’d think could provide a pretty easy answer.)
Now, we’ve finally moved one step closer to watching Natasha Romanoff kick ass on a solo basis, with Variety reporting that Black List screenwriter Jac Schaeffer has been tapped to provide a script for a Black Widow standalone film. In what may or may not be a coincidence, the news comes just a few days after the trailer for Jennifer Lawrence’s spy thriller Red Sparrow started getting attention, mostly for looking like the closest thing to an unofficial Black Widow movie we were ever going to get.
Johansson originated the character in Iron Man 2, before playing significant roles in both Avengers films, and especially Captain America: The Winter Soldier, where she was functionally the film’s co-lead. If it moves forward, her standalone film would be the second female-led MCU offering, after Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel, out next year.