“After all, it was just the two of us!” : Melanie Laurent almost made a Marvel movie!

Mélanie Laurent is an actress but also a director whose credits include Les Adoptés, Le Bal des Folles and most recently Voleuses available on Netflix. It was undoubtedly this experience behind the camera combined with a successful international career (Inglourious Basterds, Elusive, 6 Underground) that led him to audition to direct…Black Widow! Yes, we’re talking about the Marvel blockbuster whose Scarlett Johansson starrer recently teased a sequel to a surprise.

It’s in the show Nice gesture, which aired on France 2, which Melanie Laurent revealed was very close to directing Black Widow, the superhero adventure that hits theaters in 2021 and is directed by Scarlett Johansson. At the microphone of Pierre Lescourt, the 40-year-old French woman detailed this experience behind the scenes of the MCU, which we can only imagine to be special.

“I was angry”announces Melanie Laurent on this casting as another. “It lasted 7 months. There were 300 of us, it was a struggle! The first meeting was the image I had of Black Widow and the image I wanted to have of her. Very loose, one and the same. In fact, I almost went to them thieves. I told them, “I want the black widow to have boyfriends, to be kind, to wake up in the morning with frizzy hair.” They looked at me like that…” (she widens her eyes)

“I haven’t had anything for three months”he continues. Suddenly they called me and told me that in 10 days they will arrange a black widow for us. I answer them “To say that?” And they say to me: “Okay, you show us the film.” “So I write Marvel in 10 days, finally?” “No, but you can come with photos, drawings… I need you to enter the world you’re going to create.” And I, when they tell me that… I wrote the script, all of a sudden! (smile) So I did the sequencer, Zoom lasted 3h30!”

Melanie Laurent concludes this dive behind the scenes at Marvel with how she approached her goal. “Then the last step, which was crazy, was going to Los Angeles, meeting with them. There were still some of Marvel’s biggest producers in a huge room.”he says. “And here I had to make a Black Widow trailer with instructions. It’s a crazy job! There were only two of us left at the end! It was crazy to set these people up. I love learning, actually. As long as I’m learning, I’m happy.”

In the end it was Australian Kate Shortland, the other “finalist” of this long-running casting, who was chosen to direct Black Widow, which grossed nearly $380 million worldwide and attracted more than 1.7 million viewers in French cinemas.

“Thieves” trailer, available on Netflix: