A filmmaker who met with Marvel about directing Black Widow says the studio didn’t expect her to direct the film’s action scenes.
According to The Daily Pioneer, Argentinian filmmaker Lucrecia Martel — who’s known for acclaimed art-house films like Zama, The Holy Girl, and The Headless Woman — was speaking at the Mumbai Film Festival back in October and detailed a meeting she had with Marvel, where they discussed the possibility of her directing the upcoming film starring Scarlett Johansson.
“What they told me in the meeting was ‘We need a female director because we need someone who is mostly concerned with the development of Scarlett Johansson’s character,’” Martel said.
“They also told me ‘Don’t worry about the action scenes, we will take care of that.’ I was thinking, ‘Well I would love to meet Scarlett Johansson but also I would love to make the action sequences.’”
Martel had some other thoughts on the process and Marvel movies in general.
“Companies are interested in female filmmakers but they still think action scenes are for male directors,” Martel said. “The first thing I asked them was maybe if they could change the special effects because there’s so many laser lights…I find them horrible. Also the soundtrack of Marvel films is quite horrendous. Maybe we disagree on this but it’s really hard to watch a Marvel film. It’s painful to the ears to watch Marvel films.”
Another interesting note is that Martel admitted she signed something stating she was not allowed to talk about the meeting with Marvel — so her last joke, while funny, probably is a moot point: “But just in case any of this is going to be on YouTube, I would love to make Black Widow,” she said.
The job of directing Black Widow eventually went to Cate Shortland with a rumoured release to be sometime in 2020. We’ve contacted Disney and will update if the studio has any comment or response to Martel’s claims.
[H/T World of Reel]