Black Widow Has Added A Two-Time Oscar Winner

Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff in Black Widow

A new year is upon us, which means we’re not too far off from the first new Marvel Cinematic Universe movie of the decade, Black Widow. The Scarlett Johansson-led superhero flick wrapped filming last October, but even in the postproduction process, new, non-plot-related revelations can come out.

Case in point, earlier this week, Marvel released a ‘Legacy’ featurette for Black Widow, and as noticed by various fans, including Nerdiest editor Andrea Towers, at the very end, Oscar winner Alexandre Desplat is credited as the movie’s composer. Usually this sort of information is reported by an outlet first, but in this instance, Marvel just casually dropped in who the composer is at the end of this latest preview without any fuss.

Black Widow marks Alexandre Desplat’s first time composing a Marvel movie, but he’s definitely one of the biggest talents in Hollywood when it comes to music. His notable composing work includes The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the final two Harry Potter movies, Argo, Godzilla, The Secret Life of Pets and The Shape of Water, to name just a few. He’s won two Academy Awards, two Golden Globes and two Grammys, and he’s also been nominated for another Best Original Score Oscar for Little Women.

MCU movie scores can be a mixed back. Some, like Alan Silvestri’s work on the first Avengers movie, can be incredibly memorable, while others have been rather forgettable. Given his bonafides, I’d like to think that Alexandre Desplat’s Black Widow score will fall into the former category, but we’ll have to wait and see. Who knows, maybe he could follow in the footsteps of Black Panther’s Ludwig Göransson and take home another Academy Award for Best Original Score for Marvel.

The other talent working behind the camera on Black Widow includes director Cate Shortland, writer Eric Pearson and cinematographer Gabriel Beristain, as well as MCU mainstay Kevin Feige handling producer duties. In front of the camera, Black Widow’s cast includes Scarlett Johansson reprising Natasha Romanoff, William Hurt reprising Thaddeus Ross, Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, David Harbour as Alexei Shostakov (Red Guardian), Rachel Weisz as Melina Vostokoff and O.T. Fagbenle as Rick Mason, as well as Ray Winstone and Olivier Ritchers in undisclosed roles and a yet-to-be-revealed actor as Taskmaster. Whether or not we will see Tony Stark in the movie is still not confirmed.

Set between the events of Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War, Black Widow follows Natasha Romanoff alone and forced to confront her past, thus reuniting her with old allies and confronting new enemies. It’s kicking off the Phase 4 slate, and according to Scarlett Johansson, making Black Widow provided her “closure” with Natasha Romanoff, who perished in Avengers: Endgame.

Black Widow is scheduled for release on May 1, so keep checking back with CinemaBlend for continuing coverage in the months ahead. For now, look through our Marvel movies guide to learn what else is coming out during Phase 4.

Adam Holmes
Senior Content Producer

Connoisseur of Marvel, DC, Star Wars, John Wick, MonsterVerse and Doctor Who lore, Adam is a Senior Content Producer at CinemaBlend. He started working for the site back in late 2014 writing exclusively comic book movie and TV-related articles, and along with branching out into other genres, he also made the jump to editing. Along with his writing and editing duties, as well as interviewing creative talent from time to time, he also oversees the assignment of movie-related features. He graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in Journalism, and he’s been sourced numerous times on Wikipedia. He's aware he looks like Harry Potter and Clark Kent.