With shooting now under way on Marvel's film about the earlier days of Scarlett Johansson's Natasha Romanoff, AKA Black Widow, the cast is growing by one. Instead of deciding to turn the opportunity down, Ray Winstone has opted to turn the opportunity yes when it comes to taking a role in the movie.
Cate Shortland is in the director's chair, working from a script by Jac Schaeffer that is, in true Marvel style, mostly a mystery for now. The cast also already includes David Harbour, Florence Pugh and, assuming she has actually signed on (reports differ), Rachel Weisz.
The movie is shooting in London, and Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige is among the producers. Speaking to IO9, he talked a little about what the Marvel team might – stress on the might, because this could be a misdirect – be aiming for. "There’s a method to the madness,” Feige said. "There’s always a method and doing things in an unexpected way is something we find fun. There are ways to do prequels that are less informative or answer questions you didn’t necessarily have, and then there are ways to do prequels where you learn all sorts of things you never knew before. I look at Better Call Saul as a wonderful example of a prequel that almost completely stands on its own apart from Breaking Bad because it informs you about so many things you didn’t know about before. So time will tell which way we’ve gone with a supposed Black Widow movie." Cryptic, and typical Feige.
Black Widow doesn't have an official release date on the books yet, but given that it's shooting now, we'd be surprised if an announcement about a 2020 slot isn't forthcoming as soon as Disney and Marvel decide to bring us all out of the information darkness regarding Phase 4 of the MCU.
As for Winstone, he has a voice in animated outing The Queen's Corgi, due on 5 July, and continuing the animal theme, but in another direction, plays Growltiger in musical adaptation Cats, headed our way on 20 December.
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