Before watching Iron Man 2 I’d have scoffed at the notion of Scarlett Johansson doing an action movie. She’s just never seemed like the action type and, while I still think her talents would be better put to use somewhere else, after watching her own every action sequence as Black Widow we know she can totally pull it off. So, by the way, does Hollywood. Predictably, that now means she’s jumping feet first into the lucrative girls kicking ass genre.

The NY Daily News says Scarlett has made a verbal agreement to take the lead role in Alfonso Cuaron’s sci-fi action movie Gravity. If true, she’ll step into a part that was originally Angelina Jolie’s, before she moved on to other things.

The film is an outer space survival thriller about a woman attempting to make her way back to planet Earth after a satellite crash. It sounds like the sort of thing that would require Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley on screen and kicking ass. But it’s unclear how much of Scarlett Johansson you’d actually see in it, since the movie is rumored to be following in Avatar’s footsteps by rendering 60% of the story entirely in CGI. I’m not exactly keen on watching a computer generated Scarlett when I could be looking at the real thing, but Cuaron is a visual master. Trust him to do the right thing.