We all know that Marvel goes to extreme lengths to keep spoilers and leaks out of the hands of the public, but a “Black Widow” room is next-level secrecy.
If you follow Marvel movies, you’ve no doubt heard tales of Tom Holland being reprimanded for letting specific plot details go in interviews. Andrew Garfield publicly lied when asked if he was involved in Spider-Man: No Way Home. There are many tales such as these that describe the great pains Marvel takes to make sure their movies have as much impact upon first viewing as they can.
A lot of these rumors about how exactly Marvel manages to keep all of these secrets are of varying legitimacy. Cast and crew have jokingly talked about a mysterious “Marvel sniper” who watches them like a hawk to make sure they don’t spill any secrets. There probably isn’t any shadowy Disney Men in Black-style organization running around, but there are plenty of NDAs. More or less anyone who could come in contact with sensitive material from the films during production must sign a contract stating that they won’t share details with anyone.
With the rise of the work-from-home ecosystem in Hollywood during the pandemic, it became increasingly difficult for Marvel to keep a lid on leaks. It’s just a basic type of entropy. The more people you allow to be in on a secret, the harder that secret is to keep. With people taking their work home, Marvel storylines were more often than not exposed to prying eyes, even if that’s just family members looking over a cast member’s shoulder.
Perhaps all of these factors combined are what came together to necessitate the “Black Widow Room.” According to The Hollywood Reporter, this is a secret (windowless) room within Marvel headquarters in Burbank, California. That room deliberately doesn’t get a wi-fi signal, so nothing can be sent out. To make things even more airtight, cleaning staff isn’t allowed to enter the room. It’s purely reserved for whoever is working on the top-secret current project at the time.
With D23 coming up this weekend, we’ll see just how much Marvel has been able to keep a lid on this weekend. Marvel could end up announcing a lot, likely to do with the next couple of phases of its cinematic universe. Of course, they won’t divulge everything, but we’ll be looking out for those sweet, sweet post-credit scenes in the meantime.
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