Scarlett Johansson may be getting a hot new franchise. The sexiest woman alive, according to Maxim magazine, may be taking her Black Widow role solo.

The Black Widow, aka Natalia "Natasha" Romanova, first showed up in the Marvel universe as a Russian spy. She was pitted against Iron Man until she fled the Iron Curtain and joined the spy agency S.H.I.E.L.D. Black Widow is also a member of the Avengers.

Black Widow is usually thought of as a femme fatale and was ranked as the 31st sexiest woman in comics by the Comics Buyer's Guide. Sounds a lot like Scarlett Johansson, who Esquire called the "Sexiest Woman Alive" in 2006, Playboy called the "Sexiest Celebrity" of the year and who consistently ranks as one of the 100 sexiest famous women in FHM.

The Black Widow's special abilities are, according to Wiki, slowed aging, enhanced immune system, abnormally superior athletic condition, extensive military, hand-to-hand combat, martial arts, and espionage training, hypnosis and enhanced psychological defenses. Sounds a lot like Scarlett Johansson, who always looks young and who played a nude alien seductress with hypnotic powers in her new movie "Under The Skin."

Scarlett Johansson played the Black Widow in the films "Iron Man 2" in 2010 and Marvel's "The Avengers" in 2012. She is set to play her again in the upcoming "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" and "Avengers: Age of Ultron," which won't come out until 2015.

Marvel's Kevin Feige has been teasing that there may be a possible "Black Widow" standalone movie that will starring Scarlett Johansson.

During an interview for the cover story about "Captain America: The Winter Soldier," Kevin Feige, President of Marvel Studios, said in  the upcoming"Avengers: The Age of Ultron" "We learn more about her past and learn more about where she came from and how she became in that film. The notion of exploring that even further in her own film would be great, and we have some development work with that."

The  Black Widow  film is in the early development stages and may not even get made.

Scarlett Johansson made her film debut in the movie North in 1994. In 1996, she was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead for her performance in "Manny & Lo." She got great notices for her roles in "The Horse Whisperer" from 1998 and "Ghost World" in  2001 before moving on to adult roles like her turn in "Girl with a Pearl Earring"  and Sofia Coppola's "Lost in Translation" which were both released in 2003. She was nominated for Golden Globe Awards for both films. Johansson won a BAFTA award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for "Lost in Translation."