Making Movies: Black Widow?

[Local Hero]

Reported 07/04/2004
Source IGN FilmForce

IGN FilmForce has learned that Lions Gate Entertainment is wasting no time in setting up its latest Marvel Comics film adaptation, Black Widow. We've been able to confirm that X-Men screenwriter David Hayter is in the early stages of negotiations to write and direct the espionage thriller.

Our source advised us that fans can expect Black Widow to be a "low budget" project set during the Cold War, which is in keeping with the Marvel character's comic book roots. Hayter's reps confirmed that he's in talks for the project but that "no deal" has been made yet and that Black Widow is "pretty far off" in the making. Black Widow would mark Hayter's feature film directing debut unless, of course, he finally makes Watchmen first.

The Marvel Directory reminds us that, after the death of her husband, the KGB trained Natasha Romanoff "to become the spy known as the Black Widow." She later "offered her services to SHIELD, which has made use of her talents on numerous occasions." Black Widow often tangled with Iron Man, and has been involved with both Daredevil and Hawkeye.

[Enchantress]

This movie could be really cool, as long as they don't get some bimbo to play Natasha.
Seriously...I mean, you throw someone in there with some serious acting talent and it might work.
But, as Thor just said over my shoulder....This movie could easily become another Catwoman too. It could wind up having nothing to do with the Marvel U other than having the name "Black Widow" attached to it.

[Local Hero]

I agree up to a point. The thing is though, while Marvel seem to be willing to give companies a little leeway when it comes to bringing their characters to the screen, they learned their lessons of the past well. The previous attempt to make Punisher(Lundgren version) and Spider-Man(Hammond version) and the woefully forgettable attempts at Captain America, while they were made for a less sophisticated audience, mainly fell down because they moved away from the core formula of the franchises and lost their way in a morass of bad scripting.

These days Marvel, in the form of Avi Arad do seem to be keeping a slightly tighter grip as far as retaining what made the characters have enough appeal to justify a movie in the first place. The changes that have been made, have for the most part helped translate the central premise of the recent movies into terms your general cinemagoer can relate to. Things like X-Men losing the spandex, and Spidey's wrist spinarets (it worked back in the sixties that any geek in college could whip up a web fluid and delivery system in a matter of days, but the audience today may find that a bit hokey). Other changes, such as Blade's conversion from a jive talking mother to sullen bad ass have reinvigorated a character that had sat on Marvel's unused shelf for many years.

Sometimes change can be good, but honestly, if you don't mess too much with a winning formula you are bound to come up trumps.

[The Truth]

If they based this movie around the Black Widow from "The Ultimates" and put her in that sort of universe, I don't see how they could go wrong. Granted, 616 BW has a lot of history and is a great character in and of herself, but if they were to use the Ultimates version, I think they'd stand a better chance of portraying whatever story it was they were trying to seel to the audience.

If you try to use the one from the regular universe, that urge to use sometype of defining moment from her past is always going to be there and that could either come off well, or go horribly wrong. If you sell her as a newer character, then you no longer have that deep well of history tempting you, and can focus more on who she is and where she's going, as opposed to where's she's been and who that's made her.

In my opinion anyway.