Kevin Feige Compares 'Black Widow' Movie To 'Better Call Saul'

If you saw Avengers: Endgame – and I know you totally did – you might have come away wondering how Marvel is going to move ahead with their Black Widow movie. The answer seems obvious: prequel time, baby! And in case there was ever any doubt, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige recently spoke about the upcoming film, and compared it to another high-profile prequel: Better Call Saul.

Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow sacrificed her life in Avengers: Endgame, and while there's always a chance dead characters can come back – especially in comic book movies – Marvel has decided to work around that by making the standalone Black Widow movie a prequel. When recently asked about how Black Widow would all play out, Kevin Feige told i09:

"There's always a method and doing things in an unexpected way is something we find fun. There are ways to do prequels that are less informative or answer questions you didn't necessarily have, and then there are ways to do prequels where you learn all sorts of things you never knew before."

There's that word – prequel. Not clear enough for you? Don't worry, Feige kept going:

"I look at Better Call Saul as a wonderful example of a prequel that almost completely stands on its own apart from Breaking Bad because it informs you about so many things you didn't know about before...So time will tell which way we've gone with a supposed Black Widow movie."

That last sentence gives Feige a playful way of issuing a non-denial denial (Marvel has yet to officially confirm this movie, even though it's already begun filming), but the implication is clear. Black Widow will be a prequel in the same vein as Better Call Saul. Better Call Saul originally started off seeming like nothing more than a Breaking Bad prequel. And it is, technically. But over the course of the years, the series has formed an identity all it own, seemingly completely independent from Breaking Bad. It looks like this is what Marvel is hoping for with Black Widow – something that's a prequel, but that also works as its own thing.

Black Widow is being helmed by Cate Shortland, with a script from Jac Schaeffer and Ned Benson. Johansson is joined in the cast by Florence Pugh, David Harbour, and Rachel Weisz. Filming is underway and expected to last until September. No release date has been announced yet, because Marvel is being very cagey with their future films. But I imagine they'll reveal a lot more about this film – and more – when San Diego Comic-Con kicks off next month.