10 Reasons Why Marvel Will Never Make A Solo Black Widow Film

8. A Black Widow Movie Was Already Canned Once

The total absence of female action stars in Hollywood is a big talking point these days, so it's easy to forget that it hasn't always been this way. Back in the early 2000's, characters like Lara Croft, Resident Evil's Alice and the Bride from Kill Bill had a huge impact on pop culture, inspiring a million cosplays and a million more fan boy wet dreams. So what changed? Scriptwriter David Hayter (X-Men, Watchmen), actually worked on a script for a Black Widow movie around this time, using the backdrop of the splintered Soviet Empire as a setting for Natasha's KGB antics. However, the market soon became saturated with more female-led action movies that didn't perform as well, including BloodRayne, Ultraviolet and Aeon Flux. Three days after Aeon Flux bombed at the box office, the studio pulled out of the Black Widow project completely... and the rest is history. A Black Widow movie is likely to fare far better now than it would have on the tail end of this failing trend in the early 2000's, but studios regularly look to the past in order to decide how to spend their money.