Marvel's Black Widow and Hawkeye (Earth-113599)

Marvel's Black Widow and Hawkeye is a 2009 live-action film produced by Touchstone Pictures and Marvel Studios based off of the two less popular superheroes named Hawkeye and Black Widow. Taking place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe or Earth-(113599). It was originally intended to be a S.H.I.E.L.D. movie, but was changed in the middle of production to be centered around Hawkeye and Black Widow. It was released worldwide on May 1st 2009.

Production
Black Widow and Hawkeye were two of the few characters that Marvel had never sold off the rights to, and therefor have 100% creative control over them. After the Disney purchase one of the first movies they planned to make was a live-action S.H.I.E.L.D. movie starring both respective heroes, prepared to be a stand-alone franchise. As other rights reverted and were bought back from Paramount and Universal respectively, plans changed and the movie was moved into the Marvel Cinematic Universe canon, and the title was altered to simply Black Widow and Hawkeye.

Marvel and Disney were at odds about the status of the movie however. Disney claimed that it the protagonists were only supporting characters and wouldn't be able to hold a two hour movie, but Marvel insisted that it would be good world building and that they had few choices with their rights situation. Disney eventually was convinced and production continued with the film.

The director Shane Black was hired in early 2007 to helm the film. Having experience with action, adventure and spy/heist films which Marvel was looking for the movie to be. He had ideas of the film originally being a origin story for Black Widow and Hawkeye with the main villains being A.I.M. (who were name dropped in The Incredible Hulk). Most of his ideas were generally well received by Marvel, Disney and Kevin Feige respectively. Though the origin story for both the protagonists was shortened to only dialogue, as they feared adding it would overstuff the film, and thought the origins for each character were "too convoluted" in Avi Arad's words.

The film's leads shortly after Shane Black's announcement were confirmed to be Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow and Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye. It was later announced that Jason Statham would be leading as one of the movie's main Antagonists, The Taskmaster and Samuel L. Jackson would be reprising his role as Director Nick Fury. Filming began in 2008, with all going as planned. The movie was officially released worldwide on May 1st 2009.

Cast

 * Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow


 * Jeremy Renner as Clinton "Clint" Barton/Hawkeye


 * Jason Statham as Thomas "Tommy" Masters/Taskmaster


 * Guy Pearce as George Tarleton/M.O.D.O.K.


 * Samuel L. Jackson as Director Nick Fury


 * Clark Gregg as Agent Phil Coulson


 * Cobie Smulders as Agent Maria Hill


 * Maximiliano Hernandez as Agent Jasper Sitwell


 * Titus Welliver as Agent Felix Blake


 * Tim Roth as Emil Blonsky (Cameo)