Amy Seimetz Explains Saying No To Directing 'Black Widow' After Meeting With Marvel: "It's Not Really My Voice"

When Marvel Studios was looking for the director of the upcoming “Black Widow” film, the studio interviewed a ton of filmmakers. Reports said that Marvel actually might have interviewed over five dozen directors for the project, including names like Lucrecia Martel, Amma Asante, Kimberly Peirce, and Maggie Betts. Apparently, one of the women interviewed was none other than Amy Seimetz. And in a new interview, the actress-writer-director discussed the reasons why she turned down the biggest franchise in history.

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Seimetz has acted in dozens of films and TV series over the years, but she’s also expanded into the world of directing. Her first feature film was “Sun Don’t Shine,” which she followed up with helming the second season of “The Girlfriend Experience,” as well as two episodes of Donald Glover’sAtlanta.” It’s clear why Kevin Feige and the folks at Marvel would be interested in Seimetz as a filmmaker. However, in a new interview with IndieWire, she explains why she’s the one that ultimately turned them down.

“I’ve taken meetings on a lot of these things, and then I back away because I don’t want to get stuck. It’s not really my voice, and I think it’s important for women to do commercial movies, but when they do commercial movies, they continue to have a sphere to develop their voice, as opposed to suddenly jumping to a Marvel movie,” she said.

Seimetz later explained why the Marvel Studios gig was ultimately not for her.

“They told it had to be a three-year commitment, and that they were very collaborative,” she said. “As an auteur, I was like, ‘That sounds like a lot of notes. I want to cut this meeting short by saying I love what you do, but I don’t think this is going to work out very well.’”

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Obviously, when you work with a company that has released 21 films (with the 22nd coming in a couple of weeks) and earned almost $20 billion at the box office, there’s a bit of collaboration that’s expected between filmmaker and the studio. At this point, Seimetz would rather focus on her own work, or established franchises that will allow her a bit more creative freedom.

We’ve seen the Marvel Studios style work for filmmakers like the Russo Brothers, Taika Waititi, and Ryan Coogler. Of course, we’ve seen it not work out so well for folks like Edgar Wright and Joss Whedon. So, maybe Seimetz was onto something.

“Black Widow” moved on without her, obviously, as Marvel Studios hired Cate Shoreland as its filmmaker.