Black Widow's Future Has Already Been Decided

According to Marvel Studios Head of Production Kevin Fiege, the future of Black Widow in the Marvel Cinematic Universe has already been decided and planned out. We got a glimpse at her dark past in The Avengers – with references to a childhood suggesting she was a trained assassin that [minor spoilers] fell in love with the person sent to kill her (Hawkeye). Along with that, he also comments on Ant-Man, Iron Man 3 and more.

How far along are we from seeing Black Widow in her own story?

Well, I think you saw it in Avengers. I think that’s one of the many amazing things Joss Whedon can do. I think people are going to be surprised by how powerful Scarlett is in this movie, and how evolved her role is. We have already planned her next appearances and where to take that character because we believe in it and we believe in her in a big, big way. When will there be a standalone? Both is what we’re heading toward. A lot of it is that we’re only going to make two movies a year, maybe sometimes it’ll be one movie a year like this year, maybe someday it’ll be three movies a year just depending on what comes together. But really, it’s two movies. So there’s kind of a backup on the runway right now in terms of when can something go. We do like when some of the characters appear in other people’s movies.

What can you say in the way of an Ant-Man update?
Well, we’ve been working on that movie for forever, it seems. I saw Edgar [Wright] again last night and what I’ve been saying because I believe it to be true is that it’s closer than it’s ever been before.

How does that play out in Iron Man 3?
Tony very much goes back to his world and his life in California and quickly finds himself in a situation that removes him from any of the access to any of the characters and people he met in Avengers. He has to do it all on his own.

On keeping up with the Marvel library and potential stories as more films are developed:
As we were working on [the solo movies] we started to keep track of some things that the writers and filmmakers of one movie were doing anyway and we started to track them and realized that we could utilize those later down the line.That’s how the Cosmic Cube came about; what started as a little seed would grow and grow and grow to The Avengers. So there were always things that we’d keep track of and now we have enough people that there are a few people on staff who just do that, when potential ideas come up I go, “Keep a record of this — we might be able to connect this to something.” Or, more likely, it’s just potential ideas for full movies — who can the bad guy be in Iron Man 3, what should we put Thor through in his next movie, where’s Cap going now that he’s here in the modern day… all of those things. And we have lots of great comic books to actually give the true information to it.

SOURCE: Movieline