It’s been one heck of a journey, but the long-rumored, often discussed Black Widow standalone movie has finally taken a big, public step forward.
Variety has confirmed that Jac Schaeffer has been hired to write the script. Schaeffer’s first feature credit was the 2009 sci-fi romantic comedy, TiMER. She’s since found herself on the Black List for her script, The Shower, which caught the eye of actress Anne Hathaway, who asked to star in it. Hathaway also hired Schaeffer to write the upcoming Nasty Women, a Dirty Rotten Scoundrels remake that Hathaway will star in.
Schaeffer has some previous experience working with Disney as well, having written Olaf’s Frozen Adventure, a short film set in the world of Frozen that premiered alongside Pixar’s Coco last year.
The character of Black Widow has been portrayed by Scarlett Johansson in all five of her MCU movie appearances (six if you count Thor: Ragnarok), and is set to feature into May’s Avengers: Infinity War as well.Discussions surrounding a standalone movie for the character began as early as 2010, following the release of Iron Man 2 earlier that year. In 2014, Kevin Feige stated that there was still interest in developing a Black Widow movie, and that she would be a major part of the MCU during Phase Three.
