The Widow Maker

It's been a heck of a bad news, good news week for David Hayter. Last week, the X-Men scribe had to relinquish directorial control of his dream project, an adaptation of Alan Moore's Watchmen, in order to see it finally plough its way out of development hell. That was the bad news, in case you didn't guess. Then it was announced that he had signed a seven-figure deal to write a new draft of Marvel's Iron Man, for mooted star, Tom Cruise. And now, to definitively bring him out of the doldrums, he's been announced as the director of Marvel's latest property, Black Widow. A svelte former KGB agent, Natasha Romanova aka The Black Widow is very much a secondary, maybe even tertiary character in the Marvel Universe, never really holding down a consistent spot in any title, or superteam. But she's cropped up in the likes of The Avengers, Captain America and Daredevil (where she locked lips with Ol' Hornhead), and with her lithe physicality and take-no-prisoners attitude, is ripe for big-screen reinvention. And the last time Marvel tackled a relatively obscure character, the result was Blade, so they've got a good track record. "I like that she crossed over into everybody else's comic books," said Hayter, whose new baby daughter is named after the Widow. "She was the mysterious femme fatale in the story who did what was needed to be done and left." The movie will mark Hayter's directorial debut which, ironically, was the sticking point over Watchmen, with Universal apparently reluctant to entrust the $75 million property to the hands of a first-timer. No-one has been confirmed to star in the flick of yet, which will see the Widow hunted down by the Russian government after the Soviet Union dissolves. However, Empire understands that Marvel's go-to girl Rebecca Romijn-Stamos (X-Men, The Punisher) is being tapped up to fit into Natasha's snazzy black jumpsuit.