Black Widow’s director Cate Shortland has revealed it’s been more than a year since the movie was fully finished, and that it has remained untouched since. Empire published the reveal together with a new image for the movie, featuring Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) and Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) facing each other in what looks like a dramatic moment.
Black Widow was initially scheduled to release on May 1, 2020. However, due to the pandemic, the movie’s premiere was pushed several times, until it earned a tandem release both in theaters and on Disney+ Premier Acess this July. While Black Widow was supposed to kickstart Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the movie will come out after three Disney+ MCU shows have already premiered.
Since every new entry to the MCU connects to a bigger universe, even post-credits scenes are planned to tease future projects, which led fans to wonder if some Black Widow scenes needed to be tweaked after a delay of more than a year. This is a fair question, especially since the shuffle in the intended release order of MCU productions already resulted in an unexpected cameo in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier from a character that was supposed to be introduced in Black Widow first. However, it seems this is not the case according to Shortland, and we’ll get the same version of Black Widow we would have watched last year, from start to finish.
Set after Captain America: Civil War but before Avengers: Infinity War, Black Widow will force Natasha to confront her past, in a long-overdue solo adventure for the heroine. David Harbour plays the Soviet Superhero Red Guardian, while Pugh and Rachel Weisz play other spies who went through the same destructive upbringing as Johansson's Natasha. Black Widow will also bring the villain Taskmaster to the MCU, played by an undisclosed actor.
Black Widow hits theaters and Disney+ with Premier Access on July 9.