Black Widow Star Ray Winstone Got So Frustrated With Marvel’s Demands for Reshoots He Asked to Be ‘Recast’ Instead, Before Being Reminded He Was Under Contract

Black Widow star Ray Winstone has spoken of his frustration with Marvel’s demands for movie reshoots, despite the film’s director apparently being happy with his performance.

Winstone said he became so exasperated with the situation while working on Black Widow that he asked director Cate Shortland for his role to be recast, only for him to be told he had no choice but to do the reshoots, as he remained under contract.

The Scarlett Johansson-starring movie features Winstone as the villainous Dreykov, the man in charge of the cruel Black Widow training program. But despite initial enthusiasm for the part, Winstone has now said he ultimately wanted out of the project after Marvel Studios decided changes were necessary.

“I worked with this amazing director, Cate Shortland, and we worked on what my character was going to be,” Winstone said at the Sarajevo Film Festival, as reported by Variety. “He was like a pedophile running around all these girls, and they’d become black widows.

“We used to get applauded on set,” he continued, discussing his performance. “It was probably the best thing I’ve done for a really long time. Then I come home after finishing the job and get a call saying we need to do some reshoots. I say: how many scenes? [Cate] says ‘all of them.'”

Winstone did not specify what exactly Marvel had wanted to change, but the studio has become notorious for making alterations to its movies during production and afterwards, with sometimes-lengthy reshoots often required. At the same time, fans have grown increasingly wary of the practice, and pointed to cuts in The Marvels and the heavily-reworked Captain America: Brave New World as evidence the practice can result in an uneven finish.

“I said she should recast [the role], but I was contracted, so I had to do it,” Winstone recalled. “I go back, they do my hair all nice, put me in the suit, and I couldn’t do it. I’d already done it. I thought, ‘I’m not doing it now. I’ve done it. That’s how it’s going to be.’ That’s rejection, you know? There’s nothing worse than doing something, leaving it on the floor, and then being told it’s not right.”

Marvel boss Kevin Feige recently discussed the studio’s practice of continually tweaking its movies throughout production, a habit he has termed “plus-ing”.

“I’ve never been satisfied with a movie we’ve released,” Feige told The Hollywood Reporter. “There’s plus-ing happening every day on the Avengers: Doomsday set right now, and it is amazing to watch because what those filmmakers, those actors, both the ones that are playing these characters for the first or second time and the one playing them for the 10th or 12th time, are the best in the world at it, and know these characters so well. So if they have an idea, you want to listen to it and you want to adjust to it and you want to improve it. I wouldn’t want to change that.”

Image credit: Mike Marsland/WireImage

Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social