Marvel hired Nicole Holofcener as a script doctor on Black Widow

You won’t see her name in the credits, but an Oscar nominee was brought on to punch up Marvel’s next movie, Black Widow.

EXCLUSIVE

When you have Marvel money, you can recruit pretty much anyone you want.

And that’s definitely the case with the upcoming Black Widow movie starring Scarlett Johansson. The production hired Oscar-nominated filmmaker Nicole Holofcener to work on the script.

Holofcener wrote and directed movies including Friends with Money, Please Give and Enough Said, but also wrote the screenplay for Melissa McCarthy film Can You Ever Forgive Me?

She isn’t a credited writer on the Black Widow screenplay, but director Cate Shortland revealed to news.com.au, “We worked right towards the end with Nicole Holofcener, who’s a great black comedy writer.

“And she worked on the film and some of the dialogue as well with the girls. We interwove all those voices.”

There is a particularly dark joke about female reproduction that Shortland said Holofcener wrote.

Black Widow will be in cinemas and on Disney+’s Premier Access.

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Officially, Black Widow’s screenplay was written by Eric Pearson who has worked on several Marvel projects including Thor: Ragnarok and Agent Carter, as well as many of the earlier Marvel one-shot shorts.

Pearson also did uncredited rewrites on Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame, Spider-Man: Homecoming and Ant-Man.

WandaVision creator Jac Schaeffer and Ned Benson have “story by” credits on Black Widow, having worked on early versions of the script. Pearson’s involvement wasn’t revealed until after filming had wrapped.

Black Widow is the first Marvel movie to be released in almost two years due to covid-related delays.

The movie is a prequel and set between Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War. It’s a solo outing for a popular character and fans have long agitated for a stand-alone movie.

It will explore Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow’s history as a trained assassin.

In addition to Johansson, the movie stars Florence Pugh, Rachel Weisz, David Harbour, Ray Winstone and O.T. Fagbenle.

Scarlett Johansson has been playing Black Widow since 2010’s Iron Man 2. Picture: Valerie Macon/AFP

It’s not unusual for notable screenwriters to come in and punch-up a script, especially dialogue. They’re also known as script doctors.

Recently, Fleabag’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge was famously brought on by Daniel Craig to give a once-over on the still-to-be-released next Bond movie No Time To Die.

Carrie Fisher was a well-known script doctor, putting her touch on films including Lethal Weapon 3 and The Wedding Singer, while Donald Glover punched up the Black Panther script.

Black Widow is in cinemas on July 7 and will also be available to stream through Disney+’s Premier Access ($34.99) from July 9

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