Superhero Bits: Black Widow Was Pirated Like Crazy, Steven DeKnight Wants To Make A Superman Movie & More

(Superhero Bits is a collection of stories, updates, and videos about anything and everything inspired by the comics of Marvel, DC, and more. For comic book movies, TV shows, merchandise, events, and whatever catches our eye, this is the place to find anything that falls through the cracks.)

In this edition of Superhero Bits:

• A familiar character appears to be joining "I Am Groot"

• "Daredevil" showrunner wants to make a "Superman" movie

• "Black Widow" was pirated a whole bunch

• Sebastian Stan hasn't seen "Spider-Man: No Way Home" yet

• All that and more!

The CW has released a new featurette for the upcoming DC show "Naomi." The network has been ramping up its promotional efforts as of late, with the show based on the comic book of the same name set to arrive next week on January 11. Hailing from Ava DuVernay ("When They See Us"), this latest video gives us a new look at the show to go along with the recent string of trailers. Will it be able to stand tall along with the rest of the DC Comics shows on the network?

Marvel's "Eternals" is set to hit Disney+ next week, following the movie's theatrical run. Despite being the worst-reviewed MCU movie ever (at least according to Rotten Tomatoes numbers), it still made more than $400 million at the box office, which is quite good by pandemic standards. Recently, Rotten Tomatoes shared the above prompt on Twitter, asking fans if it deserved to be ranked at the bottom of the MCU. Director Chloe Zhao then responded, sharing the post on her Instagram stories, taking the high road, simply requesting that fans weigh in when the movie is made available to stream next week. Classy move, Zhao.

Former "Daredevil" showrunner and "Pacific Rim: Uprising" director Steven DeKnight has declared on Twitter that he is interested in making a "Superman" movie. He further asserts that he would want it to be with the Henry Cavill version of the character, and that he might like to use Brainiac as the villain, provided the chance.

Brainiac is one of Superman's biggest villains, though we've never seen him show up in a movie. However, we came close with Tim Burton's ill-fated "Superman Lives," which would have starred Nic Cage as the Man of Steel. Speaking a bit further, DeKnight explained in a tongue-in-cheek way that he doesn't believe this is ever going to happen.

I should put it out there that I’m also interested in someone giving me 200 million dollars with no strings attached and see if that gets traction. https://t.co/5FcHCbq3vW

— Steven DeKnight (@stevendeknight) January 4, 2022

While it does not seem as though this is something DeKnight is seriously pursuing, it's still a potentially interesting idea in the nebulous sense of things that could happen but most likely won't happen.

Recently, some storyboards for the upcoming Disney+ series "I Am Groot" (seen in the above tweet), have started making the rounds online. While Disney has yet to confirm that they are indeed genuine, they appear to be. If they are the real deal, we can see that Groot's fellow Guardians of the Galaxy teammate Drax is going to be along for the ride. Whether or not he has a significant role, or if Dave Bautista will reprise the role, remains to be seen. But it certainly makes sense to bring some familiar faces into the fold for this one.

Several new "Batman Beyond" DC Multiverse figures are now available for pre-order, and they are going for a very reasonable $19.99 each. The lineup (pictured above) includes Batwoman Unmasked, Inque as Batman Beyond, and a Blight Meltdown Variant. All three figures stand at 7-inches, are set to arrive in March 2022, and come with various bells and whistles. For pre-order information or for full details on each figure, head on over to Toy Ark.

The Winter Soldier himself, Sebastian Stan, has yet to see "Spider-Man: No Way Home." Given how well things have been going at the box office up to this point, he seems like the only person in the country who hasn't. As we can see in the delightful little interview selection above, Stan lovingly throws some shade at his MCU co-star Tom Holland, keeping up the rivalry that kicked off in "Civil War." Never change, Buck.

It's no secret that "Black Widow" didn't quite live up to expectations for Disney (or Scarlett Johansson) from a financial point of view. The studio decided to release the movie both in theaters and on Disney+ Premier Access on the same day. It suffered a massive drop in its second weekend at the box office and never really recovered. Now, we have some further context. 

As reported by Deadline, the movie was pirated an astonishing 20 million times. Per the math, if every one of those who pirated the movie had paid for a copy on Disney+, it would have been around $600 million in additional revenue.

Obviously, that math is a bit clunky, as not everyone who pirates a movie would be willing to pay for a ticket. But high quality 4K copies of the movie started circulating on piracy sites after the Disney+ debut. This made it easy for anybody to pirate an easily watchable copy of the movie. So one has to imagine that contributed to a greater-than-normal amount of lost revenue. It's easy to imagine that this hybrid release strategy for gigantic blockbuster movies will be used sparingly in the future, if at all, as a result.

Lastly, we have yet another new clip from "Spider-Man: No Way Home" debuting online. This time, we are getting a look at a key sequence that sees Spider-Man at odds with Doctor Strange, resulting in a pretty spectacular and visually interesting battle between the two heroes. At this point, I have to imagine most people reading this have seen the movie, but it's a nice way to relive one of the more memorable moments from the MCU flick from the comfort of home. Check it out in its entirety above.