Scarlett Johansson's Mysterious Marvel Project Is Apparently Still Happening Despite Delays
Scarlett Johansson became a key player in the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Infinity Saga, spending years in the role of Natasha "Black Widow" Romanoff. Over a decade after making her debut as the character in 2010's "Iron Man," Johansson bid Nat and the MCU at large farewell via 2021's "Black Widow" — a prequel set before the heroine's death in "Avengers: Endgame." However, just because she's not suiting up as one of the founding Avengers anymore doesn't mean that she doesn't plan to continue working under the Marvel Studios banner in the coming years.
Shortly after the release of "Black Widow," it came to light that Johansson and the studio were working on a top-secret, non-Black Widow-centric production. Since that news made it to the public, though, updates on the collaboration have been all but nonexistent. Thankfully, for those curious about its status, Johansson has shared that it is indeed still coming down the production pipeline. "It is still happening, [but] not currently because nothing is happening right now," she said, alluding to the ongoing WGA strike as well as the potential SAG-AFTRA strike (via ComicBook.com).
Not only will these possibly multiple strikes push Johansson's MCU production further into the future, but the franchise's film and TV slate is already pretty loaded as it is.
We've still got plenty of waiting to do before we'll see Johansson and Marvel Studios' collaboration
If SAG-AFTRA were to join the WGA with a strike of its own, it's safe to say that it would be quite a while before Scarlett Johansson's Marvel Studios project came to fruition. Then again, strikes aside, it's more than likely going to be a while before we see what the actor and the studio come up with anyway. On both the film and television fronts, the MCU is due to expand greatly in the coming years through Phase Five and Phase Six. Unless her project is slotted somewhere within them, her efforts might not reach fans until the end of the decade.
Phase Five of the MCU began in early 2023 with "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" and is on track to wrap up with the 2025 "Blade" reboot. Thus begins Phase Six, which will kick off with the long-awaited "Fantastic Four" in 2025 and conclude with "Avengers: Secret Wars" in 2027 — the grand conclusion to the three phase-spanning Multiverse Saga. Phase Six is looking a bit sparse as of this writing, so perhaps Johansson's project will fit somewhere in there. Assuming it does, that still means it's years away from becoming a viewable reality.
In these turbulent times in the entertainment world, we'll just have to wait and see what becomes of Scarlett Johansson and Marvel Studios' impending team-up.