Not surprisingly, Marvel’s Black Widow is doing boffo numbers both at the theaters and on-demand, and audiences are already clamoring for more. Black Widow director Cate Shortland and Red Guardian actor David Harbour are also hoping that the film’s success will mean more to come about Alexei Shostakov, with both calling for Marvel Studios to give the Red Guardian his own movie.
In Black Widow, the events take place in 2016, meaning it’s after Captain America: Civil War yet before Avengers: Infinity War, and we see Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) with her family from before the Avengers — Alexei (Harbour), Melina Vostokoff (Rachel Weisz) and Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh).
By the end of the Black Widow, a fugitive Natasha leaves her Russian family after defeating Dreykov (Ray Winstone) and brings down the Red Room, but we’re not sure what’s to come from Alexei in the MCU’s present day.
When discussing Harbour’s Red Guardian with TheWrap, Shortland said she would often cry with laughter.
“And there was so much good stuff that didn’t end up in the film,” the director said. “But I think that’s why Red Guardian needs his own movie. Because it will be so funny.”
Harbour confirmed that a lot of Red Guardian material was cut out from the film—including some insight on his relationship with his undercover wife Melina—and that there was quite a bit of improvising done.
“There’s a whole other movie too, on the cutting room floor, of like, me and Rachel flirting throughout the movie and various sequences,” he said. “When she breaks me out of prison and, you know, her stuff with the Taskmaster. I mean, there’s tons of stuff that we improv in this movie. And I think that’s a credit to Cate Shortland, she saw the chemistry between us and she saw sort of our voracious, you know, appetite for these characters and for this world, and she just kind of let us run with it.”
The actor would love to return to his role, whether it’s in a MCU film or perhaps even as an original show on Disney+. “I would love to give people more,” he said. “And I’m glad he’s alive at the end of the movie too.”
See David Harbour as Red Guardian in Marvel’s Black Widow now playing in theaters and on Disney+ streaming service.
Would you like to see David Harbour with his own Red Guardian movie or show? Let us know in the comments below.
