At this point, as far as we can know anything about the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it seems that Scarlett Johansson’s time as Black Widow has come to an end. It was an impressive run. Black Widow appeared in eight films in the franchise between Iron Man 2 and her solo outing and had one of the most unique stories of any character, which the actress says happened because Marvel didn’t know what it was doing in the beginning.
Scarlett Johanson made her debut in the third-ever MCU movie in Iron Man 2, so it was still quite early in the experiment that was the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Appearing on the TSC Podcast, Scarlett Johansson admits that Marvel Studios was still figuring things out, and as such, her original contract included making movies that never happened. This allowed the actress to go back and negotiate things, including where her character would go. She explained…
I had a very unique trajectory with Marvel because I was there from the beginning. Yes, you know, when I signed on to do to play Natasha Romanoff, it was like a lot of films, but they were movies that they didn’t actually end up making. And so I was able to kind of go back in and say, you know, let’s look at this again. We made this contract before kind of Marvel knew what they were doing and let’s sort of figure out like what the path of this character is going to be.
While Marvel Studios gets a lot of credit for planning things out in advance, the truth is that much more of the MCU is made up as they go along than most people suspect. When actors come on board they are frequently signed to contracts that lock them into a certain number of appearances, but that doesn’t mean what those appearances will be is known at the time.
While it certainly seems Scarlett Johansson is done at Marel Studios, she has nothing but good things to say about her experience. And she specifically praises Kevin Feige who she says always made sure that whatever the actors were asked to do was something they wanted to do. She continued…
I love my Marvel family, and Kevin Feige who’s our boss man over there, he loves working with actors so much. He’s such a cinephile. He lives and breathes this stuff, he’s an incredible storyteller and an amazing person on many, many levels, and he’s a really special collaborator. He never wants to make anything that actors don’t want to be in. He’s never going to hold you to be in something. Like if you’re not on board and don’t want to play, then like nobody wants that.
It wasn't all sunshine and rainbows between Johannson and Marvel, or at least Marvel's parent company. Johannson actually sued Disney over the financial arrangements for Black Widow when the movie was released on Disney+ alongside a theatrical release. Having said that, the word is that Feige was frustrated by the lawsuit, in part because he didn't want to upset talent, which would fit with what Johansson said here.
In the end, it feels like it all worked out. Scarlett Johansson had a great run in the MCU, and the franchise is continuing to go strong following her time. And Marvel probably has a bit better idea what it's doing now.
