Marvel's Black Widow and Hawkeye is a 2009 live-action film produced by 20th Century Fox and Marvel Studios based off of the two less popular superheroes named Hawkeye and Black Widow. Taking place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 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
20th Century Fox in the early 2000s had planned to make was a live-action S.H.I.E.L.D. movie starring Black Widow and Hawkeye, prepared to be a stand-alone franchise. As the X-Men and Spider-Man films took off and with the formation of Marvel Studios, plans changed and the movie was moved into the Marvel Cinematic Universe canon with the title eventually altered to simply Black Widow and Hawkeye.
Arad and Feige were at odds about the status of the movie however. Arad claimed that the protagonists were only supporting characters and wouldn't be able to hold a two hour movie, but Feige insisted that it would be good world building and that they had few choices with their rights situation. Arad eventually was convinced and production continued with the film. The director Cate Shortland 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. She had ideas of the film originally being an origin story for Black Widow and Hawkeye with the main villain being the popular Marvel Comics supervillain, Taskmaster. Most of her ideas were generally well received by Disney and Marvel Studios respectively.
The film's leads shortly after Cate Shortland'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 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 Alexi Shostakov/Red Guardian
- 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
- Linda Cardellini as Laura Barton
- Ty Simpkins as Callum Barton
- Savannah Page Rae as Lila Barton
- Tim Roth as Emil Blonsky (Cameo)
