Black Widow premiered at events around the world on June 29, 2021, and was released in the United States on July 9, simultaneously in theaters and through Disney+ with Premier Access. It is the first film in Phase Four of the MCU, and was delayed three times from an original May 2020 release date due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Black Widow broke several pandemic box office records and grossed over $379 million worldwide, becoming the seventh-highest-grossing film of 2021. The film received generally positive reviews from critics, with praise for the performances, particularly those of Johansson and Pugh, and the action sequences, though the villains received criticism. In July 2021, Johansson filed a lawsuit against Disney over the simultaneous release, which was settled two months later. Helpfully, Black Widow is an established character, and fans have wanted to see Johansson in a solo movie for years.
It's great to see Johansson leading such a slickly entertaining female-centric action flick, and it's not every big-budget blockbuster that tackles the coercion of women's reproductive rights as a means of control. Pugh certainly reigns supreme over everyone else in the film but Harbour is a close second. If you've seen the trailers you know that Alexei isn't just some regular guy—he was the Red Guardian, a Russian superhero. His personal conflict and torment, having been one before people like Captain America, Iron Man and Thor were cool, is both heartbreaking and hilarious. Harbour goes all out with the performance, which at times can feel excessive, but is mostly just endearing.
Rachel Weisz fans won't be as happy with Melina, just because she's got the smallest role of the three and the least to work with in terms of emotion and character. But she's still good in the role and a joy to watch, especially opposite Harbour. Pugh will reprise her role in the Disney+ series Hawkeye, with her involvement in the series set up by the film's post-credits scene. In June 2021, Shortland expressed interest in directing another film in the MCU, and noted that a potential sequel to Black Widow would likely revolve around a different character since Romanoff is dead in the present-day MCU.
Weisz stated that she would be interested in a future storyline featuring Vostokoff assuming her Iron Maiden comic book persona. In late March, Disney moved the film's release date to July 9, 2021, and announced that it would release simultaneously on Disney+ with Premier Access. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings was delayed again as a result. Kareem Daniel, the chairman of Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution, said the simultaneous release gave fans options to see the film while serving the "evolving preferences of audiences". Chaim Gartenberg at The Verge opined that Disney had to move forward with a simultaneous release for the film because they could not afford to delay Marvel's Phase Four television series.
For instance, the series Hawkeye was expected to release later in 2021 and contain spoilers for Black Widow, so the film needed to be released before then. Later that month, Disney pushed back the release to May 7, 2021, rescheduling Eternals and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings as a result. In January 2021, Feige said he still expected Black Widow to debut in theaters, but Variety reported that Disney was considering releasing the film on its streaming service Disney+.
Variety felt it would be "insurmountably more challenging" for Black Widow to become profitable if it did not have a traditional theatrical release. According to Variety, Feige was opposed to a hybrid release for the film. If the film was delayed again, the film distribution industry believed Disney would move it to July 9, 2021, which at that time was the release date for Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Chapek soon stated that Disney was remaining flexible as they gauged consumer behavior, and they would make a final decision on releasing the film at the "last minute". The following April, Johansson expressed interest in starring in a Black Widow film, and said that it would be driven by demand from the audience. In April 2015, Johansson spoke more on the possibility of a solo Black Widow film, seeing the potential to explore the character's different layers as depicted in her previous appearances.
However, she felt that the character was being "used well in this part of the universe" at that time. While promoting Civil War the next April, Feige noted that due to the announced schedule of films, any potential Black Widow film would be four or five years away. He added that Marvel was "creatively and emotionally" committed to making a Black Widow film eventually.
Lionsgate Films began developing a Black Widow film in April 2004, with David Hayter attached to write and direct. The project did not move forward and the character's film rights had reverted to Marvel Studios by June 2006. Johansson was cast in the role for several MCU films beginning with Iron Man 2 , and began discussing a solo film with Marvel.
Jac Schaeffer and Ned Benson contributed to the script before Pearson was hired. Filming took place from May to October 2019 in Norway, Budapest, Morocco, Pinewood Studios in England, and in Atlanta, Macon, and Rome, Georgia. Following the confirmation of Hailee Steinfeld as Kate Bishop in Disney+'s upcoming Marvel series, "Hawkeye" starring Jeremy Renner—thanks to set photos and videos that called our her participation before it was official—more cast members in the show have been revealed.
The biggest name for sure is the surprise, but rumored inclusion of Florence Pugh, reprising her spy and assassin character Yelena Belova, from the upcoming Scarlett Johansson -led "Black Widow" movie, which has yet to come out because of all the COVID-19 delays. Considering the costumes and action of Black Widow, it makes sense that the cast might have worked up a set bringing Natasha's long-awaited solo movie to life. The starring cast all wore jumpsuits, and then engaged in dizzying fight sequences. As such, we can't blame Florence Pugh and company for a bit of perspiration. It's important to remember though, the movie isn't called "Yelena" or "The Red Guardian." It's called Black Widow. You almost get the sense that if this was the first time Johansson had played the role, maybe she would have made other decisions.
Instead, she's locked into this persona and character after a decade-plus of playing in this universe and doesn't have a lot of wiggle room. That holds the film back a bit because even when Natasha makes amends or learns a crucial new piece of information, she's still the same old Natasha. She will also be seen pursued by a force that will supposedly stop at nothing to bring her down. The movie, touted to be a stylised espionage thriller as well as a dysfunctional family drama, will also see Natasha dealing with her history as a spy and the broken relationships left in her wake long before she became an Avenger.
As far asBlack Widow release date is concerned, the film will get a theatrical as well as a digital release on July 9th, 2021. All the latest gaming news, game reviews and trailers The go-to source for comic book and superhero movie fans. Outside of North America, Black Widow earned $78.8 million in its opening weekend, from 46 markets. It was the number one film in nearly all of these markets, including the markets in the Asia Pacific region where it opened, except for Japan, where it was third, and all markets in the Latin America region. Black Widow was the top pandemic opening weekend in 15 European markets. IMAX accounted for $4.8 million of the weekend gross, from 59 countries, 11 of which set opening weekend records for the pandemic.
In Korea, the film's opening day was the second-best of 2021, with $3.3 million, and Hong Kong had the best opening of the pandemic, with $3.2 million. The film had the largest opening day of the pandemic in Austria, the Czech Republic, Qatar, and Slovakia, while in Saudi Arabia, the film earned the highest opening day for a Disney release ever. As of July 11, 2021, the top markets were Korea ($12.7 million), the United Kingdom ($9.7 million), and France ($6.9 million). A scene of Romanoff wearing underwear and a T-shirt that Shortland enjoyed due to "how sexy is she's in control" was cut from the film because test audiences criticized the scene's "male gaze". In mid-March, Disney removed the film from its release schedule due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In early April, Disney announced that Black Widow would be released on November 6, 2020, and the rest of their Phase Four slate of films were shifted to accommodate this. In September 2020, Disney pushed the release back again to May 7, 2021, followed by a third shift in March 2021 to July 9, 2021. In February 2004, Lionsgate acquired the film rights for Black Widow, and in April announced David Hayter as writer and director of the film, with Marvel Studios' Avi Arad producing.
By June 2006, Lionsgate had dropped the project and the rights reverted to Marvel Studios. Hayter and Marvel tried getting another financier to develop the project, but Hayter "never felt comfortable that we had found a place that was willing to take the movie, and the character, seriously". This left Hayter "heartbroken", but he hoped the film would be made "some day". The film will also star British actress Florence Pugh in a role that is officially shrouded in mystery but was described as "a spy on the same level as Romanoff, likely her moral opposite" when the reports of her casting were revealed.
Beyond that, we don't know much, although rumors persist the film will be a prequel, set when Natasha was just getting started in her spy career. Scarlett Johansson will once again reprise the role she's been playing sinceIron Man 2, while Florence Pugh is also part of the cast in an undisclosed role, but we hear she's playing another spy.Cate Shortland is directing from a script byJac Schaeffer. Meanwhile, THR broke the news regarding David Harbour joining theBlack Widow cast. I can easily picture him as some sort of government agent, or even some sort of villain. Harbour has been a dependable character actor for years, but he blew up in a big way thanks to his major role on Netflix'sStranger Things. But as I said, most of the action is set in 2016, which means you may need to jog your memory a bit regarding the wider "Avengers" arc.
This need to be a "puzzle piece" is probably the biggest flaw in this whole picture, but likely a direct note from the bosses. At regular intervals there are references to other Marvel characters, and each crack about Captain America or Iron Man yanks you out of the rising tension of the film you are already watching in pursuit of some hazy connection. You can feel the suffocating tendrils of corporate marketing choke the life out of the few genuine dramatic moments in the movie. The film's release was delayed from 2020 until 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Pugh portrayed Yelena, a surrogate sister to Johansson's title character. She and Johansson developed a camaraderie that was reflected both on and off screen.
After Pugh teased her co-star about Black Widow's fighting pose, a similar interaction was added to the script. Florence Pugh was cast in her first movie at the age of 17 and a few years later received a nomination for a British Academy of Film and Television Arts Rising Star Award. Her roles have ranged from period dramas to horror movies to Marvel action flicks, with notable parts in Midsommar, Black Widowand the television miniseries The Little Drummer Girl. Pugh received a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Amy March in the 2019 adaptation of Little Women. Still, for a relative newcomer, Florence Pugh's net worth is pretty impressive.
She has her many paychecks from film and television appearances to thank for it—these include 2016's Lady Macbeth, which racked up a whopping $1.2 million in box office earnings, and 2019's Little Women, which collected over $109 million from the box office alone. Although we aren't sure how much Pugh was paid to star in these films, it's safe to say that these box office hits earned her a string of generous paychecks. Her latest appearance in Black Widow, meanwhile, is only bound to improve her already huge net worth. Florence Pugh's Marvel debut sees her playing opposite Scarlett Johansson's Natasha Romanoff in the character's first standalone film,Black Widow.
The film, which was originally set to premiere in May 2020 but was ultimately pushed back, premieres July 9, 2021, on Disney+ and in theaters. In it, Pugh plays Romanoff's younger sister, Yelena Belova, who, like her, grew up and trained in the Red Room to become a post-soviet Russian spy and assassin. By now, we know that Pugh's decision to take some control back over her training for "Black Widow" paid off massively. In the Elle UK profile, Pugh notes that she cooked good meals for herself every day and brought them to set, despite Scarlett Johansson's insistence that her training team could cook for her. Fortunately, the result of all of Pugh's hard work is on full display in "Black Widow," a film that should, hopefully, launch what will be an epic arc for her character in the coming years.
Of course, that all goes without also mentioning how Pugh's investment in the physical side of her performance as Yelena paved the way for one of the funniest lines in "Black Widow." Marvel Studios' highly-anticipatedBlack Widowmovie finally hit theaters and Disney Plus through Premier Access this weekend, and fans have been excited to return to the movies for the newest chapter in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. One particular standout from the film amongst critics and fans alike is the introduction of Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova. Based on the film's post-credits scene, fans won't have to wait much longer to see Pugh suit up once again. As exclusively reported by The Direct, Pugh will reprise her role this fall in the Hawkeye Disney+ series, presumably hunting down Jeremy Renner's Clint Barton.
Yelena and Natasha were the surrogate daughters of Melina Vostokoff and Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian , so they grew up together but were eventually separated and taken to the Red Room for training. With Yelena coming back soon, it's time to get acquainted with the actress who plays this new Widow. "It's strangely a good time for the movie to come out," Johansson told Yahoo Entertainment in a recent virtual chat, where she was joined by co-stars Florence Pugh, David Harbour and Rachel Weisz . "This year we've had so much time collectively to think about where our priorities lie and sort of regroup and think about how we want to live our lives. A lot of people have spent a lot of time away from others that they're normally very close to, and this film is about family. And it's about the family you choose, and people lifting one another up through this shared, traumatic experience and coming out the other side.
… In a weird coincidental sort of fated way, it's oddly reflective of some of the things that we've all been experiencing. From director Cate Shortland, Marvel Studios' action thriller Black Widow highlights Natasha Romanoff , aka Black Widow, at a time when she must face the demons of her past and the relationships she left behind before she became an Avenger. While fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe feel they've gotten to know Natasha over the years and previous films, the opportunity to get a glimpse of her backstory shows a whole new side of her world. In August, Disney filed a motion to move the lawsuit to arbitration, citing that Black Widow outgrossed other MCU films on its opening weekend with an "impressive pandemic-era showing". Johansson's attorney John Berlinski criticized this move as an attempt by Disney to "hide its misconduct in a confidential arbitration", while calling their previous responses misogynistic. The lawsuit was settled the following month under undisclosed terms, though Deadline Hollywood reported that Johansson would receive over $40 million from Disney.
The settlement came after Disney chose to give theatrical-only releases to subsequent 2021 films following the box office success of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and Free Guy , which both also received exclusive theatrical windows when initially released. It premiered in 46 territories over the course of its first weekend. In the U.S. it opened in 4,100 theaters, with 375 in IMAX, over 800 in premium large format, 1,500 in 3D, and 275 in specialty D-Box, 4DX, and ScreenX theaters. In IMAX screenings, approximately 22 minutes of the film appeared in IMAX's expanded aspect ratio.
Release dates for China, Taiwan, India, parts of Australia, and other Southeast Asia and Latin America markets were not set by the film's opening weekend, and by mid-September 2021, the film was not expected to be released theatrically in China. Disney's president of marketing Asad Ayaz said that after Black Widow was delayed from its original May 2020 release date, the marketing team paused their campaign for the film. Once they began working towards a new release date in 2021, they were able to use character looks and story points that they had not revealed in the initial campaign to build a new approach to the film. Ayaz explained that they did not want it to feel like they had returned to the same marketing campaign, which focused on the Black Widow symbol and her black costume.
The marketing team differentiated the new campaign by featuring the character's white costume from the film instead, and by focusing on her legacy as an Avenger. The campaign featured 30 brands, including co-branded opportunities with GEICO, Ziploc, BMW, and Synchrony Bank. Additional custom partnerships occurred with Fandango, YouTube, Roku, TikTok, Amazon, a Twitter E3 gaming sponsorship, and announcements, posters, and collectibles for the various premium theater experiences such as IMAX.
An Avenger, highly trained former-KGB assassin and former agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Johansson said she was "going out on a high note" and was proud of the film, feeling that her work portraying Romanoff was now complete. Director Cate Shortland watched all of Romanoff's MCU appearances consecutively in preparation for the film, and chose to set the story where Romanoff is alone and not "in relation to anyone else". Shortland said Romanoff's ambiguous psychological journey was the center of the story. Anderson, who speaks Russian, felt her background in taekwondo and gymnastics training were helpful for the role. A theory based on a possible easter egg suggests that the film has not one, but multiple antagonists. According to fans, the mask belongs to Iron Maiden, a villain in the Black Widow comics.
The fact that the mask appears in the same shot as Rachel Weisz's character, Melina, suggests that she may take on the mantle of Iron Maiden, leading to familial conflict in the film. The same report from The Hollywood Reporter describes the film as "an internationally set story centering on Natasha Romanoff, the spy and assassin who grew up being trained by the KGB before breaking from their grasp, becoming an agent of SHIELD and Avenger." The standalone film is a prequel focusing on Scarlett Johansson as her Avengers character Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff, reprising her role from preceding MCU films including her recent and tragic turn in Avengers Endgame. The highly-anticipated film, which also stars David Harbour and Rachel Weisz, was intended for release in 2020 but was pushed back several times due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Without an Avengers 5 on the docket in the next two years at least, it begs the question of what capacity Pugh's Black Widow will have. Will Pugh actually be an Avenger, or will she pop in and out of MCU movies (like Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury?).
Yelena's never been a formal member of the Avengers in the comics, but that doesn't mean she couldn't join or even lead the team in a future movie. Also joining the cast and appearing in the series are Vera Farmiga, Fra Fee, Tony Dalton, Alaqua Cox, and Zahn McClarnon. According to Variety, Farmiga is scheduled to play the Marvel character Eleanor Bishop, the mother of Kate Bishop . Fee will play a character named Kazi, potentially short for Kazimierz Kazimierczak, known as mercenary villain Clown to Marvel fans. Dalton will play Jack Duquesne, likely the character known as Swordsman, an early mentor to Hawkeye.
Scarlett Johansson's Natasha Romanov died in the last "Avengers" movie, and not a superhero death that means she'll be coming back. She's gone for good, so this movie hits the rewind button a bit and is set in 2016. But before that, we go even further, to 1995, when Natasha was 12 or so, and living an innocent and idealized childhood in Ohio. Romping around the swingset with a younger sister, a loving mother and father , this prologue sequence is truly a gorgeous, brief cinéma étude of warm memories.
