By Travis Johnson
Cate Shortland, the director of Somersault, Lore, and Berlin Syndrome, has been picked to call the shots on the long-mooted Black Widow solo movie for Marvel Studios.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Shortland beat out over 70 other directors who were considered for the job, including Emma Asante (Belle, A United Kingdom), Maggie Betts (Novitiate), Melanie Laurent (Galveston) and Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don’t Cry) – any of whom we would have been happy to see land the gig, by the way. Shortland, who doesn’t even have an agent, had an edge in star Scarlett Johansson, who is a fan of her work.
And thank Christ for that – Marvel was apparently having such a hard time finding a suitable woman director (from that list? Come on…) that they started looking at XY chromo filmmakers, which would not have played well in Peoria. Frankly, Black Widow is going to have to deal with a couple of setbacks already. For one thing, it really has taken Marvel longer than it should have to pull the trigger on this one (Wonder Woman was great, but it’s weird that WB/DC beat the House of Ideas to the punch of a female-led superhero movie). For another, Johansson has not exactly covered herself in glory of late regarding the whole Rub and Tug casting controversy, which sees her playing a real life trans man for her Ghost in the Shell director, Rupert Sanders (another role that attracted a fair whack of criticism).
Black Widow will see Johansson reprise the role of Natasha Romanova, a Russian spy turned S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who first appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2010’s Iron Man 2, going on to become a mainstay of the Avengers. The new film, written by Jac Schaeffer, is apparently set before the first Avengers movie which means that, along with the upcoming Captain Marvel movie starring Brie Larson, both of Marvel’s woman-centric movies are set in the past. What’s up with that?
