David Hayter Talks About His Axed Black Widow Film

Back in the 2000's Lionsgate and Marvel Entertainment were developing a live-action Black Widow movie with David Hayter set to write and direct. David talked to FemPop revealing what happened to the film and some of the plot points. A slew of poorly made and unsuccessful female led action films basically sabotaged it's progress. It would get the axe and the rights reverted back to Marvel. Later on the character was eventually added to Iron Man 2 with Scarlett Johansson in the role.

Currently Marvel Studios is open to making a solo film with Johansson and have talked about developing a new treatment with writers. Anything is possible after the likely success of the Avengers. Johansson has signed an extensive picture deal with Marvel which means that they really only have to announce it.


"What I tried to do was use the backdrop of the splintered Soviet Empire – a lawless insane asylum with four hundred some odd nuclear missile silos. It was all about loose nukes, and I felt it was very timely and very cool. Unfortunately, as I was coming up on the final draft, a number of female vigilante movies came out. We had Tomb Raider and Kill Bill, which were the ones that worked, but then we had BloodRayne and Ultraviolet and Aeon Flux. Aeon Flux didn’t open well, and three days after it opened, the studio said, “We don’t think it’s time to do this movie.” I accepted their logic in terms of the saturation of the marketplace, but it was pretty painful. I had not only invested a lot of time in that movie, but I had also named my daughter, who was born in that time period Natasha – after the lead character in Black Widow. I named my daughter after a movie that I wasn’t working on anymore."