Australian director Cate Shortland (Lore, Berlin Syndrome) is set to direct Black Widow for actress Scarlett Johnansson to reprise in a second solo outing for female protagonist in the Marvel MCU following next year’s debut of Brie Larson as Captain Marvel. Black Widow, who first hit the pages of Marvel in 1964 as a Russian superspy-turned-heroine with accumulating affiliations in later issues, is being penned by Jac Schaeffer as of back in January.
As Borys Kit notes exclusively at The Hollywood Reporter’s Heat Vision column on Thursday, the move marks a milestone push for the studio and for Shortland who reportedly has no industry representation and still managed to land as the favored pick by Johansson. The director is said to have beat out nearly seventy other candidates following a year’s search with a female director being top priority apart from glancing at potential male nominees.
Plotwise, Kit states the Black Widow standalone movie will be set before the events of Joss Whedon’s roaring 2012 superhero ensemble, The Avengers – Johansson’s sophomore emergence as the character after Iron Man 2 in 2010. Further production news and start dates remain pending while the studio stays its silent course regarding future MCU movies.