Trivia: A 'Black Widow' Movie Almost Happened Four Years Before 'Iron Man'

Marvel Studios has turned unknown characters like the Guardians of the Galaxy into major stars, but we still don't have a Black Widow movie. It's a touchy subject, considering Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige has told the fans a Widow film is in development for sometime. They have one of the most popular actresses in the world in the role – Scarlett Johansson - who just starred in a superhero-esque action film, Lucy, which became a big surprise hit. You'd think all the boxes are checked, but it still hasn't happened yet.

The interesting thing is, it almost happened in 2004. Ten years ago, and four years before Marvel Studios hit the scene with Iron Man, X-Men and X2 writer David Hayter wrote a Black Widow movie that was almost made. But Hollywood politics cut it off at the pass. Read the full story below.

The original source of this story was a FemPop interview with David Hayter back in 2011 that got recycled by The Mary Sue on Thursday. We actually put it in Superhero Bits three years ago, but Black Widow has since become a bit more of a controversial topic. So this isn't new news, but it's more relevant now than ever.

Here's Hayter's quote:

What I tried to do was use the backdrop of the splintered Soviet Empire – a lawless insane asylum with four hundred some odd nuclear missile silos.  It was all about loose nukes, and I felt it was very timely and very cool.  Unfortunately, as I was coming up on the final draft, a number of female vigilante movies came out.  We had Tomb Raider and Kill Bill, which were the ones that worked, but then we had BloodRayne and Ultraviolet and Aeon Flux. Aeon Flux didn't open well, and three days after it opened, the studio said, "We don't think it's time to do this movie."  I accepted their logic in terms of the saturation of the marketplace, but it was pretty painful.  I had not only invested a lot of time in that movie, but I had also named my daughter, who was born in that time period Natasha – after the lead character in Black Widow. I named my daughter after a movie that I wasn't working on anymore.

So what was the movie about? The original author of the original piece found a version of the script online, which Gamma Squad summarized as follows:

We would have seen some of her early training in Russia. Once the Soviet Union fell, she would have moved to America, but her Russian mentor Ivan Petrovich (aka The Crimson Dynamo) would have tracked her down, forcing a final showdown. The CIA, double-agents and all sorts of other fun would have also been involved.

So here's a question. Hayter's story sounds plausible and his origin script makes sense. When Marvel Studios finally gets around to making a Black Widow movie, do you think this origin story is the way to go? Or would you do something in the present day of Phase 3 or 4 or whatever?

Are you surprised Hollywood killed a Black Widow movie ten years ago?