Marvel’s Black Widow Movie Reportedly Targeting 2020 Release

A new report suggests that the potential Black Widow movie may release in theaters in 2020. Marvel Studios is finally moving forward with the standalone film starring Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff, aka Black Widow, after years of discussing its possibility. The studio recently hired Blacklist and Olaf’s Frozen Adventure scribe Jac Schaeffer to pen the screenplay for Black Widow, and Schaeffer is reportedly looking to meet with Johansson soon to discuss the particulars.


Black Widow is one of the MCU’s original superheroes; Johansson made her debut as the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent-turned-Avenger in Jon Favreau’s Iron Man 2. And while audiences have been waiting years for Marvel to give the character her own solo movie, the studio constantly danced around the subject until finally putting it into development last week. Unfortunately, there’s no guarantee that the movie will happen, but it seems that the studio is hoping to release the movie within the next few years.


Daily Mail reports that Marvel Studios is planning on releasing the Black Widow movie sometime in 2020, which should be doable considering that the script is already being worked on. Of course, the next step would be selecting a director and then a production team. And the film would need to go into production in 2019 in order to make one of Marvel’s three mystery 2020 release dates.


At the moment, the only MCU movie slated to release in 2020 is James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, a release frame the director hinted at in summer 2017 and then recently reaffirmed. Since Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 opened in May 2017 and performed exceptionally well at the box office in that frame, Marvel may want to release the upcoming sequel in May 2020. That means, if Black Widow does indeed release in 2020, it will either hit theaters in August or November. Seeing as Doctor Strange released in November 2016, it’s possible that Marvel would want to release Scott Derrickson’s Doctor Strange 2 in November 2020, which leaves the unclaimed August release for Black Widow.


Again, the Black Widow movie is still in the early stages of development has not officially been given the green light from Marvel Studios. If the movie does happen, though, and if it manages to outperform virtually every other MCU movie thus far by grossing more than $900 million globally, Johansson is expected to earn quite the payday. But, it doesn’t have to release in 2020 for that to happen; it can also hit theaters in 2021. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.