The Making of a Solo Black Widow Movie, Still A Long Wait Ahead for Marvel Fans

"We've already started discussions with Scarlett [Johansson] about the idea of a solo [Black Widow] movie and have begun putting together concepts, but The Avengers comes first," said Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige in an interview back in 2010. In subsequent talks with the press, he also said: "We learn more about her [Black Widow] past and learn more about where she came from in Age of Ultron. The notion of exploring that even further in her own film would be great, and we have some development work with that."

However, Marvel has already announced its line-up of films to be released until 2019 and still notably absent from the schedule is the highly anticipated Black Widow solo movie. The upcoming greenlighted Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) films are: Avengers: Age of Ultron on 1 May 2015; Ant-Man on 17 July 2015; Captain America: Civil War on 6 May 2016; Doctor Strange on 4 November 2016; Guardians of the Galaxy 2 on 5 May 2017; Thor: Ragnarok on 28 July 2017; Black Panther on 3 November 2017;Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 on 4 May 2018; Captain Marvel on 6 July 2018; Inhumans on 2 November 2018; and, Avengers: Infinity War Part 2 on 3 May 2019.

As may be seen from the list, Black Widow won't be getting her own standalone movie anytime soon - at least not until the final planned Avengers film is made and shown come 2019. Apparently Marvel wants to unravel her back story slowly and piece by piece. Her character was first introduced in 2010's Iron Man 2 as an undercover SHIELD spy posing as Tony Stark's assistant. More about her was revealed in 2012's The Avengers and in 2014's Captain America: The Winter Soldier. According to Feige, "Her part in [2015's] Avengers: Age of Ultron is very very big, and further develops and further enhances her character. The plans that we have for her throughout the rest of theAvengers saga is very very big, and lynchpin, in fact, to those films. So instead of taking her out there, or instead of doing a prequel, which we haven't done yet, continuing the forward momentum and the continuity of the Cinematic Universe. Of which Widow is a key, key part."