When The Avengers arrived in theaters in 2012, only three of the main characters in the ensemble had yet to get their own standalone features: Nick Fury, Hawkeye, and Black Widow. It was Scarlett Johansson’s character who came away stealing that movie, as Black Widow was finally fleshed out and given some shades of coloring after first debuting in Iron Man 2. There’d been talk previously about a potential Black Widow movie, but the fan demand became even louder after the character’s standout turn in The Avengers.

However, when Marvel Studios unveiled its lineup of Phase Three films through the year 2019 last fall, a Black Widow movie was still not on the schedule. Steve recently spoke with Johansson at the press day for Avengers: Age of Ultron and asked the actress if a Black Widow movie remains on the table:

“I think that there’s room for a standalone movie. The character has a really rich origin story and I’ve been really fortunate to kind of place all these layers on top of one another and kind of build up this character to this point where I think I can now start to peel them away and reveal different sides of her and really focus on—I think I’ve been able to grow with the character, the character’s been able to grow with me. Her dilemma that she faces it’s a deeply personal one, she has this great, huge, epic kind of calling and now is suddenly going, ‘Wait a minute. I have this epic calling, but I wanna make a choice for myself. I feel like I’ve put in the hours, I should be able to make active choices’ and she inevitably chooses the heroic path and kind of puts her own personal desires and needs aside. Those are things that kind of butt up against each other and interesting things happen when you have a character that’s pulled in many different directions and in my mind there’s room for plenty more Black Widow and certainly more—I think I could see her in a standalone film.”

While it doesn’t appear that a Black Widow film is coming in the near future, Johansson revealed that she’s spoken with Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige about a series of standalone features:

“I’ve spoken to Kevin about it. I mean, of course, of course we’ve had that conversation before, and I think Kevin would also like to see a standalone film. I think I can speak for him and say that. That’s all, really. Right now I think this character is used well in this part of the universe, but I think that Kevin—I mean, we’ve talked about it and we both share similar vision for what could be a standalone series.”

The actress went on to say that, initially, Marvel wasn’t sure how audiences were going to respond to the character, and the decision to make Johansson a co-star of Captain America: The Winter Soldier came as a result of seeing Widow’s relationship with Cap in The Avengers:

“My contract has changed. Marvel and myself didn’t really know how the fans were gonna react to Black Widow the first time and how she was gonna be—they couldn’t anticipate how they would want to use her or if they would want to use her. I mean we invested in that character, but the audience had a great reaction to the character, which has been so awesome. For instance, I wasn’t contracted into doing Cap movies, but that storyline worked out so well I kind of branched off and I found myself in that standalone movie. My contract is kind of mutating, I guess [laughs] or morphed to fit the demand of the character.”

Johansson stressed that though Marvel contracts can be extensive, she’s happy to stick around for a while longer:

“It’s been a very good relationship back and forth and I think Marvel—the one thing about working with them is they don’t want anybody to work on the movie that doesn’t want to be there, obviously. So whatever you’re contracted to should not feel like golden handcuffs, and they don’t want that either… I will certainly be around and that’s because it’s been such a great response. I mean, I’m always happy to put the cat suit back on, for sure.”

So fear not, Black Widow fans. It doesn’t sound like Johansson’s leaving Marvel anytime soon.

For more of our coverage from the Avengers: Age of Ultron press day, peruse the links below.