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Scarlett Johansson Sues Disney over ‘Black Widow’ Streaming Release
- rdtwo 5y agoYou think she’s blacklisted now?
- labster 5y agoNo. Suits over compensation are common in Hollywood.
- ricopags 5y agoKnowing nothing at all about the industry from an insider perspective, my outsider surmise is maybe a lesser star in this situation would be. But Scarlett Johansson is the highest grossing female 'bankable'[0] star and as such even if Disney might not want to work with her, I doubt she will ever be wanting for work. >Expect her ROI to jump after the box-office takes of "Black Widow" are tallied. ope. I think the dispute over compensation is likely fair, and will be settled out of court. [0]https://www.workandmoney.com/s/most-bankable-movie-actresses-ec08bbf41d4f4ec4 https://www.workandmoney.com/s/most-bankable-movie-actresses...
- calmd 5y agoThe problem is if Disney blacklists her from its main franchises, Star Wars and Marvel and Pixar/Disney animation films, that is more than half of the box office these days. The box office is I think 50% super hero films now. That said I think they won't...
- toomuchtodo 5y agoSounds very antitrust to me.
- ALittleLight 5y agoThe United States government needs to break up The Avengers?
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- ViViDboarder 5y agoNot exactly, but maybe they shouldn’t have been allowed to buy Pixar, Lucas Films, and Marvel Studios.
- echelon 5y agoMaybe it was a bad idea to let Disney own almost every major studio and franchise.
- sofixa 5y agoAnd do their content distribution.
- minimaxir 5y agoShe won't be getting any more roles as Black Widow, anyways.
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- tajustice 5y agoMind not using the term "blacklist"? It's racist and othering, ties negativity to Blacks and other PoCs. "Blocklist" and "denylist" are better terms that are neutral and more descriptive.
- walshemj 5y agoIn the entertainment Biz unions these days they use "call first list " get a rep for not paying talent and you go on that list.
- silicon2401 5y agoPlease don't refer to people as "blacks" and "pocs". That's racist as it boils people down to their most superficial trait. I'm being sincere.
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- tajustice1 5y ago"Black" is a racial category for those who identify with the African diaspora: https://apnews.com/afs:Content:9105661462 https://apnews.com/afs:Content:9105661462 "PoCs" is for people of color, all those identifying as non-white. It's not racist to use these terms, it's racist for you to denigrate them as "boiling people down". Thinking these terms are racist is a property of whiteness. I highly suggest that you read https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Fragility https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Fragility by Robin DiAngelo so you can have some introspec into your white fragility. I'm being sincere.
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- mixmastamyk 5y agoAlso, she is near the end of her run as the character, so has little to lose. Many of the Avengers are moving on to let others take over.
- tag2103 5y agoExactly my thought. I wonder who the next black widow will be.
- approxim8ion 5y agoUnlikely, she is very talented and extremely popular. She may not do a Marvel Studios project again, but her character's arc is complete now so there's not much of a reason to have her anyway.
- themodelplumber 5y ago> Ms. Johansson said in the suit that her agreement with Disney’s Marvel Entertainment guaranteed an exclusive theatrical release, and her salary was based in large part on the box-office performance of the film. Meanwhile, the film was released to stream simultaneously with the box office release. Ouch.
- bilbo0s 5y agoSounds like she had people negotiating for her who failed to recognize the full weight of the pandemic's lasting repercussions. Who knows? They may have even negotiated this deal before the severity of the pandemic was plain? Whatever the case may be, it's a teachable moment. You almost have to have "continuous wargaming" to sort out ongoing effects the pandemic may have on your business.
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- bosie 5y agoFrom the article: > In a March 2019 email included in the suit, Marvel Chief Counsel Dave Galluzzi said the release would be according to a traditional theatrical model, adding, “We understand that should the plan change, we would need to discuss this with you and come to an understanding as the deal is based on a series of (very large) box office bonuses.” doesn't sound like they negotiated this 2 months ago...
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- jordache 5y agodude, they didn't negotiate on starring in the movie, shoot the movie, post production it, and then released it all within the pandemic window.
- Robotbeat 5y agoDisney lied about it. They said they would renegotiate with her if plans changed about theatrical release, and then when plans changed, they didn’t renegotiate. (The contract was signed WELL before the pandemic.)
- gnicholas 5y agoPretty damning email: > In a March 2019 email included in the suit, Marvel Chief Counsel Dave Galluzzi said the release would be according to a traditional theatrical model, adding, “We understand that should the plan change, we would need to discuss this with you and come to an understanding as the deal is based on a series of (very large) box office bonuses.” UPDATE: just realized that she's suing Disney and this quote is from a Marvel exec. Still bad, but it would be much worse if it had been a Disney exec.
- nerbert 5y agoThere you go.
- sto_hristo 5y ago"Said". Good luck with "said" in the court. Movie was bad nevertheless.
- CydeWeys 5y agoIt's in an email. Why would that be problematic for court?
- bilbo0s 5y agoBecause it's not a contract. If emails were contracts, every email that comes later would supersede it. You can't run things that way. If you agree to it, put it in a contract. But if you wanted to allow emails as contracts, then the last email on a subject would always be the final contract for instance. It would be too unfair and difficult to sort out. For instance, was the highlighted email the last email on the subject? If not, do those subsequent emails also represent contracts? What was in the last email? The game could go on and on. Whereas with a properly executed contract, everyone knows what everyone signed. Now it can influence legal proceedings, but only insofar as it illustrates where a negotiation was going. And again, subsequent emails would point to where those negotiations landed in the end.
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- calmd 5y agoThis makes sense. A lot of stars expect a cut of box office revenues and negotiate that in. But the negotiations happened probably prior to the pandemic and the new situation probably was unthinkable. Also the box office in general has been destroyed recently because of the pandemic. What would have likely been $+150M opening weekends and close to $1B totals revenue (or even more) are reduced to fractions of that. EDIT: Even worse, it was actually to be released in May 2020, thus the negotiations for salary were likely done in 2017/2018 or possibly earlier. Disney+ wasn't even announced back then.
- DerDangDerDang 5y agoOrange site bad.
- calmd 5y agoDisney+ with 100M active subs is completely different than minor streaming services before that.
- anigbrowl 5y agoAnd there is nobody in Hollywood that wouldn't have anticipated that. Disney is the Microsoft of the movie world - an extremely aggressive company with a track record of dominating or being a major player in any market it chooses to compete in.
- ghaff 5y agoOf course, no one commenting here, especially me, knows. Obviously, they knew about streaming when negotiating the contract and may have even anticipated it might be big. But it's at least possible that they did not anticipate that Disney might release a film in one of their tentpole franchises at the same time as in theaters. Or, more likely, the tried to get Disney to commit to a specific box office exclusivity window and Disney refused and/or offered something different in exchange which, in the absence of a pandemic, looked better by comparison.
- lastofthemojito 5y agoFeels like when Microsoft licensed Mosaic from Spyglass to become Internet Explorer, and a chunk of the compensation was tied to a fraction of revenue from Internet Explorer. Of course Microsoft gave IE away as part of Windows so IE never had any revenue associated directly with it. Eventually MS did settle a lawsuit brought by Spyglass for $8 million to make the issue go away.
- CydeWeys 5y agoThat's a great parallel. Most of Disney's profit on this movie is gonna end up coming in the form of Disney+ subscriptions, which she won't be getting any cut of. And unlike the Spyglass case, her original contract explicitly anticipated this -- Disney just ignored it and now a lawsuit is the only way to settle it.
- jp57 5y agohttps://archive.is/es07a https://archive.is/es07a
- minimaxir 5y ago> The decision to put the movie on Disney+ is projected to cost Ms. Johansson more than $50 million, a person familiar with details of her contract claimed. Granted, those financial estimates likely assume the movie had premiered as planned without a worldwide pandemic. Legal accounting is fun.
- dariusj18 5y agoI cannot imagine that Disney didn't consider this when making the decision to release on Disney+. There's a shadow budget somewhere to settle this.
- handmodel 5y agoAside from the issue of box-office split I imagine like there are a lot of other material ways actors lose out when this happens. A studio may look at a 50M ad buy and think that, because it would only net 60M in ticket sales tops, its not worth the risk. However, from the POV of the actor part of the reason they appeared in a big budget movie was to get lots of screentime on tv/ads beforehand to boost their profile.
- CalChris 5y agoThis reminds me of Robin Williams. Disney did roughly the same thing to him. He did Aladdin (highest-grossing of 1992) with the proviso that Disney couldn't sell merchandise. They did. He didn't sue but he refused to work with Disney again and created quite a storm in Hollywood. Disney eventually publicly apologized (but only after Katzenberg left). https://insidethemagic.net/2021/05/robin-williams-refused-disney-th1/ https://insidethemagic.net/2021/05/robin-williams-refused-di... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Williams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Williams