50 Fun Facts About Black Widow (2021 Film)

Which Disney+ series opened Phase Four ahead of the delayed Black Widow?

WandaVision opened Phase Four in January 2021 while Black Widow, pushed back three times from May 2020, waited until July; it ended up the phase's first film but its fourth release.

Who directed Black Widow?

Cate Shortland had a champion in Scarlett Johansson, who admired her drama Lore and pushed for her through a search that lasted more than six months and dozens of candidates.

Between which two MCU films is Black Widow mostly set?

Civil War and Infinity War bracket the story because, Kevin Feige said, a prequel should stand on its own; he pointed to Better Call Saul as the model rather than retell Natasha's origin.

In the 1995 prologue, in which US state is Natasha's fake family living undercover?

Ohio is the cover: two Russian agents pose there as a suburban couple with two unrelated girls as their daughters, until they steal S.H.I.E.L.D. intel and flee the country by plane.

Who plays Yelena Belova in Black Widow?

Florence Pugh had been on Marvel's list since late 2018; the studio opened the field to other actresses, then came back to her after her reviews for the wrestling comedy Fighting with My Family.

Which actress reportedly turned down the role of Yelena before it was cast?

Saoirse Ronan was among the actresses Marvel looked at in early 2019 and is reported to have said no; the studio then went back to the performer it had favoured since the previous autumn.

Alexei Shostakov, Natasha and Yelena's father figure, is better known by which superhero name?

Red Guardian in his prime appears only in flashback, and it was filmed last: the actor playing Alexei bulked up to 280 pounds for the prison scenes, then lost about 60 during the shoot.

Which Oscar-winning actress plays Melina Vostokoff, the mother figure and Red Room scientist?

Rachel Weisz plays her as an ambiguous mother figure, but in the comics Melina turns villain as Iron Maiden, a storyline Weisz said she would be 'very interested' in if it were written.

Who plays General Dreykov, head of the Red Room?

Ray Winstone found the reshoots 'soul-destroying' and told Marvel to recast the part; he came back, he said, only because he was contracted to and would otherwise have ended up in court.

Who is revealed to be under Taskmaster's mask in Black Widow?

Antonia Dreykov, the general's daughter, was believed dead in the bombing Natasha used to defect; the writer wanted the villain to be a loose end from her past rather than the comics' mercenary Tony Masters.

Which former Bond girl plays Taskmaster in Black Widow?

Olga Kurylenko's casting was kept secret until release, and the mimic's borrowed fighting styles were so hard to perform that it took several stunt doubles to play the part alongside her.

How does Natasha overcome the pheromone lock that stops any Widow from attacking Dreykov?

She breaks her own nose to sever the nerve that carries smell, so the pheromone can no longer reach her; she had goaded Dreykov into landing the first punch.

In Black Widow, what does the Red Room turn out to be?

A secret aerial facility: a flying fortress hidden in the clouds, held up by its own engines and styled on Soviet brutalist architecture, which ends the film crashing back to earth in flames.

In which city did Natasha and Clint Barton carry out the mission first hinted at in The Avengers?

Budapest was a running joke between the two Avengers for nine years; the film reveals it as the bombing of Dreykov's office that bought Natasha her place in S.H.I.E.L.D., and the shame she still carries.

Who supplies Natasha with a remote safehouse and, later, a Quinjet?

Rick Mason's actor, O-T Fagbenle, first auditioned to play Taskmaster before the script changed; his Quinjet scene was added in reshoots because test audiences liked seeing him with Natasha.

Who visits Yelena at Natasha's grave in Black Widow's post-credits scene?

Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, now Yelena's employer, blames one of the Avengers for her sister's death and names him as her next target.

Which comedy star makes an uncredited cameo in Black Widow's post-credits scene?

Julia Louis-Dreyfus was meant to make her Marvel debut here, but the film's delays let The Falcon and the Winter Soldier introduce her first, the one change Kevin Feige said the pandemic forced on Phase Four.

Which TV spy drama inspired the premise of Black Widow?

The Americans gave the director and her star the template of a manufactured spy family, which is why the pivotal scene is not a fight but a family dinner, table-read days before it was shot.

Alexei boasts of once fighting which Avenger, a duel the MCU timeline makes impossible?

Captain America is the rival Alexei was built to match, and he swears they fought in the 1980s. The timeline rules it out, but the film's writer said Alexei believes every word he says.

Jessica Gao's rejected Black Widow pitch leaned so heavily on which hero that Marvel gave her that hero's series?

She-Hulk was Gao's favourite, so she wrote her into a high-school-reunion caper for Natasha; a Marvel executive said it felt like a She-Hulk film with Black Widow in it, and the series followed.

Which studio first bought the Black Widow film rights in 2004, with David Hayter to direct?

Lionsgate lost its nerve: David Hayter said that three days after the heroine film Aeon Flux opened badly, the studio told him it was not the time for this one, and the rights went back to Marvel.

Which actress was in early talks to play Black Widow in Iron Man 2 before Johansson?

Emily Blunt lost the part against her will: Fox invoked an option left over from The Devil Wears Prada and made her do the Jack Black comedy Gulliver's Travels, so Scarlett Johansson stepped in.

Chloé Zhao pulled out of the running to direct Black Widow partly because it clashed with which of her films?

Nomadland, she said, was the right story for her, and it won her the Oscar for Best Director; Marvel got her anyway for Eternals, which she began writing while still shooting it.

In which country did Black Widow begin principal photography in May 2019?

Norway plays itself: Natasha lies low in a remote safehouse there until Taskmaster attacks her car, and set photos surfaced the day after cameras rolled.

Which piece of her own clothing does Yelena give Natasha as a keepsake at the end of Black Widow?

A vest: Natasha is wearing it in Avengers: Infinity War, so the film explains a costume audiences had already seen three years earlier, a detail the writer said turned out to matter far more than he expected.

Black Widow's car chase went through 13 identical SUVs supplied by which carmaker?

BMW provided the X3s, and the stunt team rebuilt them to misbehave: the main cars swapped their electronic handbrake for a hydraulic one so that they would slide on cue.

Which James Bond film does Natasha watch, quoting along, while hiding in her safehouse?

Moonraker plays on her television until the power cuts out, and Natasha speaks Roger Moore's quip about a python with a crush on him along with him.

Which composer replaced Alexandre Desplat on Black Widow late in post-production?

Lorne Balfe built the score from a fictitious Russian folk tune, the sort of song he imagined the sisters hearing as children, while listening to a lot of Prokofiev and Stravinsky.

Black Widow's opening credits feature a slowed-down cover of which Nirvana song?

Smells Like Teen Spirit, in a dreamy cover by Think Up Anger with singer Malia J, plays over footage of the Widow programme that the title designers shot and then aged to look like 8mm film and VHS.

Which 1971 hit is young Yelena's favourite song, played as her fake family flees in the 1995 prologue?

American Pie comes back years later, when Alexei sings it to calm Yelena, his proof that his bond with her was real even if the family was a cover.

Which of Natasha's Avenger habits does Yelena tease her about throughout Black Widow?

Striking a pose mid-fight became a running gag only after the actress playing Yelena teased her co-star about it on set; the writer overheard and said it was going in the script.

Black Widow's final release date, 9 July 2021, was taken from which Marvel film that then followed it into cinemas?

Shang-Chi gave up its July slot and moved to 3 September; it was Black Widow's third new date, after May 2020, November 2020 and May 2021 had each fallen to the pandemic.

Black Widow streamed at home for an extra $30 under which Disney+ label?

Premier Access brought in more than $60 million worldwide on opening weekend, the first time Disney had put a dollar figure on a film's streaming sales, and cinema owners blamed it for the film's second-weekend collapse.

What did Scarlett Johansson's July 2021 lawsuit over Black Widow accuse Disney of?

Its streaming release broke her contract, she argued, and cost her 'very large box office bonuses' tied to a cinemas-only run; Disney said the suit had 'no merit whatsoever' and that she had already been paid $20 million.

How did Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow lawsuit against Disney end?

An out-of-court settlement, on undisclosed terms, closed the case after two months; Deadline reported it at more than $40 million, and by then Disney had switched the rest of its 2021 films to cinemas first.

Black Widow took which film's pandemic-era US opening record?

F9: The Fast Saga had held the record with a $70 million start. Black Widow's lead was brief: its 67% second-weekend fall was then the steepest of any MCU film, and it finished on about $380 million worldwide.

Which later Marvel film reunited Yelena, Alexei and Taskmaster from Black Widow?

Thunderbolts* gave Yelena her own team film in 2025: she leads it, with Alexei along for the ride, four years after Black Widow set her up to take the baton from Natasha.

Which country never released Black Widow in cinemas, starting a run of MCU films kept out until 2023?

China never gave a reason: Black Widow was the first of several Marvel films shut out of its cinemas, a de facto ban that cost Disney hundreds of millions in ticket sales before it lifted in 2023.

Which Arctic archipelago's mountains were the model for the range around Alexei's prison in Black Widow?

Svalbard's real peaks stand in for Russia: Wētā FX rebuilt the range from photographs and photogrammetry, then sent a digital avalanche down it.

On which farm animals does Melina test the Red Room's mind control in Black Widow?

Pigs: Melina refines the chemical that controls the Widows on her farm outside Saint Petersburg, and Wētā filmed live New Zealand kunekunes as reference for the digital animals on screen.

Which Stranger Things star plays Alexei Shostakov in Black Widow?

David Harbour arrived with the beard and long hair he had grown for Stranger Things and chose to lean in, telling the crew 'Let's use the weight' before eating his way up to the size of the prison-era Alexei.

Black Widow's post-credits scene takes place after Natasha's death in which earlier Marvel film?

Avengers: Endgame gave Natasha no funeral, and the director said the quiet grave was deliberate: Scarlett Johansson had told her the character would have hated a public one.

Heidi Moneymaker, Scarlett Johansson's stunt double and the subject of an ESPN film, was a college champion in which sport?

Gymnastics launched two stunt careers: she and her sister Renae both became leading Hollywood stunt doubles, and Johansson herself narrated the E60 special about Heidi.

Ever Anderson, who plays the young Natasha in Black Widow, is the daughter of which action star?

Milla Jovovich's daughter had one earlier credit: playing a younger version of her own mother in Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, a film directed by her father.

Which group's president said Disney 'should be ashamed' of its response to Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow lawsuit?

SAG-AFTRA's Gabrielle Carteris accused the studio of 'gender-shaming and bullying' after it called the star callous for suing during a pandemic and made her $20 million fee public.

What colour does Natasha dye her hair at the end of Black Widow, matching her look in Avengers: Infinity War?

Blonde hair is the last of the film's stitches to Infinity War: by the final scene, two weeks on, she looks just as audiences had met her three years earlier, and flies off to free her friends.

Which Disney+ series did Yelena next appear in, continuing the post-credits storyline?

Hawkeye's head writer had lobbied to use Yelena, so Marvel added the post-credits scene to send her his way, and at first he had to keep the tie-in secret from his own team.

Before Harrison Ford took over the role, which actor played Thaddeus Ross in Black Widow?

William Hurt's Ross hunts Natasha as a fugitive from the Sokovia Accords, and she slips away from him early in the film; it was Hurt's fifth and final turn in the part.

Where does Natasha's fake family fly to at the end of the 1995 prologue?

Cuba is where General Dreykov is waiting: the 'parents' hand over what they stole from S.H.I.E.L.D., and the two girls are taken from them and sent to the Red Room.

Black Widow's cast shot the mid-air fight held aloft in what facility?

A vertical wind tunnel kept the actors airborne indoors while stunt performers did real skydives; effects artists then added the sky and the burning wreckage raining down around them.