It wasn’t too long after Scarlett Johansson made her Marvel Cinematic Universe debut as Natasha Romanoff in Iron Man 2 that Kevin Feige publicly declared his interest in rewarding her with a solo adventure. Fast forward 11 years, and Black Widow wasn’t entirely worth the wait.
Longtime supporters of both the franchise and the character were less than thrilled to discover the standalone superhero spectacular was finally happening after Avengers: Endgame had killed her off in the main timeline, and that backlash came before two significant spanners were thrown in the works.
The pandemic saw Black Widow hit theaters a year behind schedule, and its box office chances were instantly hampered by its experimental status as a simultaneously Disney Plus Premier Access debutant. The latter proved to be a point of contention so severe that Johansson ended up suing the Mouse House for breach of contract, a high-profile rebellion against her corporate overlords that dragged on for months and resulted in a multi-million dollar settlement.
Despite earning $380 million from multiplexes in total and an estimated $67 million from streaming on its opening weekend alone, a financial breakdown revealed Black Widow only turned a profit of $67 million, hardly a resounding success when Forbes noted the company had funneled a total of $288.5 million into the production from beginning to end.
Reviews hardly painted it as top-tier MCU, either, but at least it gifted the world with Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova. Not only that, but it’s made a splash on streaming for the first time in a long time, too, with FlixPatrol revealing the contentious comic book story to have made a return to the charts on both Disney Plus and iTunes.