Joss Whedon Says He Would Direct Marvel's Black Widow

Director Joss Whedon says he'd be willing to return to the Marvel movie universe under the right circumstances, and those circumstances would need to include Scarlett Johansson.

At the San Diego Comic-Con, the director of Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron told IGN he would definitely be interested in helming the long-rumored movie centered on Johansson's Black Widow character. "If somebody pointed to me and said, 'You want to make a Black Widow movie?' the answer would be 'Duh,'" Whedon said. "I think that character really is very interesting and very earthbound, and so it's the kind of action that I got to do less of with somebody like Thor or the Vision. When you get into your Superman territory it's harder to maintain that sort of gritty action that the Russo brothers do so beautifully. And she's got that kind of thing... and really do a spy thriller, really do a good, paranoid sort of John LeCarré on crack sort of thing."

Whedon has a long history with strong female protagonists going all the way back to his first TV series, the WB's Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And, let's face it, who doesn't want to hang out with Scarlett Johansson? Not Whedon. "Scarlett Johansson is just delightful," he said. "She works really hard, but she just spends most of her time cracking me up, so it would be a fun shoot."

Of course, Black Widow won't be the first female superhero to get her own Marvel movie: Brie Larson will be portraying Captain Marvel in the character's upcoming standalone MCU outing, scheduled to arrive in theaters on March 8, 2019.