UPDATE: Scarlett Johansson reportedly got $40 million in Black Widow settlement
The terms of the settlement remain undisclosed, but sources report that Johansson's payout will be significant
Aux News Black Widow
The legal battle between Black Widow star Scarlett Johansson and Black Widow Giant Omnivorous Movie Producer Disney got nasty pretty much from the jump; it took very little time for Disney to begin categorizing Johansson (who sued the studio in late July) as greedy and ungrateful for accusing Disney of breaking its promises regarding the film’s simultaneous theatrical and Disney+ release, while Johansson’s lawyers were swift to accuse the studio of trying to “weaponize” her success against her.
But none of that fractious language was in evidence today, as Variety reports that the two parties have now officially Made Nice, with Johansson and Disney having apparently reached a settlement in the case. There’s no word on how much money ended up changing hands—Johansson was suing for $50 million, claiming that Disney essentially sabotaged Black Widow’s performance to shore up its streaming projects, cheating her out of millions in box office-based bonuses—but it was presumably hefty enough to make everyone involved very, very polite, pretty much all of a sudden.
Johansson:
I am happy to have resolved our differences with Disney. I’m incredibly proud of the work we’ve done together over the years and have greatly enjoyed my creative relationship with the team. I look forward to continuing our collaboration in years to come.
And here’s Disney’s Alan Bergman, sounding equally as vetted-by-PR in an effort to remove all human emotion from this once-heated conflict:
I’m very pleased that we have been able to come to a mutual agreement with Scarlett Johansson regarding Black Widow. We appreciate her contributions to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and look forward to working together on a number of upcoming projects, including Disney’s Tower of Terror.
(Obviously, Bergman gets bonus points here for also managing to work in a plug for a future project, name-checking the ride-based film Johansson agreed to star in just two weeks before Black Widow premiered, kicking off this whole very high-profile conflict.)
So, there you have it: Everything’s nice, nobody’s mad at anybody, and, of course, absolutely nothing has been formally resolved in the ongoing, still extremely explosive debate over theatrical windows and hybrid releases in the COVID era. (For what it’s worth, Disney has pulled back from the hybrid drops, spurred on by the strictly theatrical success of its latest MCU film, Shang-Chi.) Anyway, we’ll see you all back here when Denis Villeneuve resumes screaming about Dune getting compressed onto HBO Max in a couple of weeks. Huzzah!
Update, 10/1/21 at 4:59 p.m.: While the exact details of the settlement are, per usual, going undisclosed, Deadline reports this weekend that sources have informed them that Johansson’s payday is, to put it mildly, significant: Somewhere in the neighborhood of $40 million, just $10 million less than her initial damage request. It’s hard not to see that as a pretty unequivocal win for Johansson, even as all parties now strive to put a smile on this whole frequently ugly encounter.
193 Comments
Reports are that it’s near $40 million when all is said and done. Which…. I’d say is a win for Scarlett.
Considering the original claim was that her box office take ‘could have been up to $50 million’ then yes, this is a big win for her since that figure was probably based upon assumptions set before the pandemic. I don’t know what her take was on a percentage basis, but expect that the result would have been less than $40 million, and definitely less than $50 million.
That was my guess-something less than $50 million, probably close to $40 million plus a mountain of NDAs was pushed across the table.
WOW that’s almost triple what I brought in last year. Crazy.
OMG, that must have been one hell of a ‘make-it-rain!’
$40mil or so!
This is exactly what everyone knew would happy.
This is what I “knew” would happen before Disney started using some pretty loaded language and tossing around accusations in its press releases. After that I kind of thought they’d lost their minds. Was it a negotiating tactic? Where they really prepared to go to court? Who the hell knows. The whole thing looks crazy stupid to me on Disney’s part. Not sure what they got out of this, or if it was worth the bad press.
Irs just a tactic. Daring the other side to blink. Nothing more.
I think they always knew they’d settle (it’s not like paying out $50 million or even $500 million would cause Disney execs to go hungry), and they just wanted to humiliate ScarJo a little bit before writing the check to deter other talent from doing the same thing. It’s got to be a little unpleasant to have a bunch of internet nobodys taking sides in your workplace legal dispute, and Disney is choosing to make that the price of admission.
If I were other talent, the only deterrent would be from signing up for future Disney projects.
That was just them trying to spin it as greedy rich woman instead of greedy corporation in public opinion so people wouldn’t boycott them while they were trying to sell Shang-Chi and Jungle Cruise tickets. And I’m sure there really are some people it worked on.
And I for one was happen to hear it!
Were you at Disneyland, the Happeningest Place On Earth at the time?Oh, wait. That kind of works.
Every lawsuit is essentially a game of chicken. In this case, Disney really had no desire for a protracted legal battle—even if they won that battle they’d lose from all the bad publicity, especially seeing how Johansson is much more popular than Disney’s execs.
I think the public opinion over this suit would’ve been very different if most Disney execs were more physically attractive than Scarlett Johansson. They could’ve won this thing and looked like heroes if they just worked on their appearance more.
They should just smile more.
I like to think that Michael Che had to pretend to hold back a fronting Colin Jost from going ape on some Disney guys.
Right on, let’s get Bob Iger in a little vinyl bodysuit.
She would have had even more support if she had been a he, e.g. RDJ or one of the Chrises (well, maybe not Pratt).
Plus the added context of fans begging Disney for years to give Black Widow her own movie, and when they finally do it’s this awkward prequel made after they had already fridged the character that they dump onto their streaming service.
Cry more
I kind of figured it was quickly heading toward a resolution in her favor once the story started to threaten Disney’s relationship with Kevin Feige.
It’s not just bad PR, I think they were more afraid of the precedent it set if ScarJo won in court. Pretty much everyone who had a similar contract with Disney would have filed a similar suit citing her case and it would be hard to see how they would lose. Rumor has it that Emma Stone was seriously considering a similar suit over Cruella, where she had a very similar compensation scheme set up.
Disney couldn’t win. It was impossible. Even if they counted every home purchase as $40 box office (including the monthly fee), if four people watched they’d still be short. Add in shared accounts and repeat viewing and Disney’s argument goes from almost reasonable to a blatant lie.
True. While the initial box office would be greater than the streaming revenue, Disney can leave the movie on its service indefinitely—slowly, slowly continuing to draw a trickle of revenue. There’s also the consideration that there are people who finally decided to subscribe because Black Widow was released on it.
I’d love to know the inside story of what happened here. Someone get Michael Wolff on the case!
I don’t think there’s much to it. Something like this:(1) Disney violates a deal it made about how a movie would be released, hoping that it would get overlooked due to Covid creating special circumstances.(2) ScarJo sues.(3) Disney tries to bluff.(4) Disney realises she’s not backing down and she’s likely to win and this is all bad publicity.(5) Disney pays ScarJo millions of dollars for an out of court settlement.
(6) Disney opens ridicously overpriced hotel for nerds. Makes money back from settlement in first month of operations.
And I don’t even think the first point was done maliciously. It seems more that a contract that was written in the Before Times, before something so unforeseen happened, just didn’t have any way to handle this and Disney blindly fumbled about.
It was 100% done maliciously because they didn’t negotiate with anybody involved, they just did it. WB did the same thing and appears to have lost Nolan in the process.
Well I don’t know about you guys but I can finally get a night’s rest knowing that Johansson and Jost won’t be going without.It had to have been touch and go for a while.
was watching SNL a while back with my significant other after they first got together, and told her “oh yeah, the weekend update guy is engaged to Scarlett Johansson” and she was quiet for a second and then remarked “he must be huge”
That or stupid, boring people are naturally drawn to one another.
Carrying Jost has got to be expensive. Won’t someone think of the children?
If this hadn’t worked out, there was the real possibility that their child would have had to support themself as an instagram influencer.
Any time Disney is forced to treat anyone with less money mildly better, I sleep better.
Yeah, Disney lost this. Any money Johansson got from the settlement is money she wouldn’t have seen if she hadn’t sued, and she was getting way more public support than they were. Add to that Shang-Chi’s success, which confirmed in the eyes of many that the hybrid drop hurt Black Widow and you have a situation that Disney wouldn’t want to last very long.
Yeah this was lose-lose-lose for Disney. If they won in court, they’d save some couch cushion money (by their standards) and have serious talent attraction issues going forward. If they lost, it’s big $$$ plus a PR disaster AND talent issues. This was the ONLY way out for Disney.
The comment above was written before the amount came out. It’s even more money than I thought she got.
Meanwhile Alan Dean Foster and company are just sitting, waiting for the phone to ring.
Alan Dean Foster also settled out of court.
Squabbling over the difference between a few million, first world problems! Lol. Hopefully she can use some of that settlement money to buy her husband a personality.
Sounds like ScarJo got what she wanted out of this since Disney wouldn’t want this case to drag on for months or years that could ended up harming their reputations as well as further plans for MCU and Disney+.I wouldn’t be surprised if she got at least $30 million plus some royalty or bonus from Black Widow movie as well as reworked contract for their next projects.
I think Disney saw a reasonable chance that if this got into open court, they might be fucked big time. I’m not surprised they de-escalated from their tonedeaf accusation.
I remember a few people saying that Shang Chi doing as well as it has probably only helped her lawsuit.
Oh for sure. And did so in the middle of the Delta variant breakout.
Bingo-bango, you are correct. Disney saw the writing on the wall and decided to pay up.
Shang-Chi is a better movie (according to most people), and was released after most people had gotten their vaccine.
I think it is more that this is just how business gets done in movies. Somebody promises you the moon, then tries to convince you that this wedge of cheese IS the moon, and the only way to get what you were promised is to sue. It is the only language they understand.
Nope Pretty sure this was never about money, considering Disney was treating streaming as box office for her compensation, before she sued them. I’m not sure what she was really after, but suing when they already offered her the only monetary gain she would get doesn’t make sense unless this was never about money….
No, that’s incorrect. Marvel Studios’ lawyer told her people after Disney+ launched that they planned on releasing the movie in theaters, with the understanding that that’s what the contract required, and saying they’d circle back if plans changed. Then the rona hit. Disney then announced the streaming plan. ScarJo’s people called Disney and the Mouse left them on read.The icing on the cake for Disney was that, with the bulk of Ms. Johansson’s
compensation being tied to box office receipts, Disney knew that the cannibalization of such
receipts by Disney+ would save Marvel (and by extension, Disney) “very large” amounts of
money that it would otherwise owe Ms. Johansson. On information and belief, Disney
intentionally induced Marvel’s breach of the Agreement, without justification, in order to prevent
Ms. Johansson from realizing the full benefit of her bargain with Marvel.https://deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Complaint_Black-Widow-1-WM.pdf
Johansson’s
contract and furthermore, the release of Black Widow on Disney+ with
Premier Access has significantly enhanced her ability to earn additional
compensation on top of the $20 million she has received to date,” the Burbank, California-based company stated, adding that Johansson received compensation of $20 …Jul 31, 2021In court filings Disney already stated they considered all the streaming revenue to be part of the box office for her compensation, before she sued.I still can’t figure out why she sued given she wasn’t going to lose any money…..
I think it’s stands to reason she was going to lose money versus a cinema only release which is why she took legal action.
Because she was going to lose money and what Disney claimed in their statement to the press was a lie.Disney’s claim that Marvel talked this over with ScarJo’s people is at odds with the timeline put forward by her side. But even so, there’s a difference between a $10-12 movie ticket for a film you see once and whatever Premier Access cost to watch whenever you want. The only other thing that maybe held water was the claim that this should’ve gone to arbitration instead. But clearly they realized that wasn’t a fight they were going to win.https://deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/black-widow-disney-arbitrtion-motion.pdf
$10-12? More like $10-20 (from 2D matinee to primetime 3D IMAX). A family of 4 will spend $10-50 more before snacks compared to a virtually unlimited number of people paying a total of $30 on Disney+.In short, I’m agreeing with you. Disney’s lie was so egregious that they would have gotten hammered even in mediation, let alone a courtroom.
Its hard when you get twenty million but were hoping for fifty. Like, who the fuuuuuck are you to deny me that extra thirty mill son? I DESERVE it I’m black widow and I need fitty million not twentyWho you think I am, Eric Bana, bitch
If that were the case, why did Disney just agree to pay her $40 million? I know settlements generally don’t include an admission of fault but, I mean, c’mon.
They certainly didn’t offer her the money she got from the settlement. What are you talking about?
What was tone-deaf from the beginning was not offering one of their key stars a deal that makes her financially whole from the streaming side so she (and other actors) can be indifferent to what kind of release they decide. In my opinion the model should be theatrical followed maybe two months later by streaming. Give people who are actually interested an incentive to spend theater dollars, and those who are worried about illness or less enthusiastic can catch it down the road. It sounds like that’s what some studios are starting to round towards.
If you remember the original reporting, there’s an email from a Disney guy saying “wow, if we put it on streaming, we’d have to pay her a whole lot of money”, which is just the sort of thing you shouldn’t put in an email.
Thats exactly what they offered her and she refused.
Well, this is the least surprising news ever. Clownfish TV (where I saw them predict this outcome repeatedly) and I’ll bet a hundred other places called it some time back.
The whole world and their sister called it awhile back.
Well, I’m glad the millionaire actress and the multi-billion-dollar international conglomerate were able to work it out.
Do you think they celebrated the agreement with the adding of chocolate to milk?
(Sometimes I just sit and fantasize about how the beautiful people live)
If I had unlimited money I’d buy like 6 chocolate milks!
Yeah, eat shit, giant corporation! finally a win for the merely opulently wealthy!
She is a producer on this movie it wasn’t only about paying herself it was about paying out her whole team down to people who make scale…hairdressers, trainers, etc… also, if this went to court which her side was pressing for after Disney’s bs it would have set president about contracts from here on out…
Her whole team. Team ScarJo. Go team!
Now that Disney has done the right thing, I definitely won’t pirate Black Widow 2!
Are you sure about that?Her team wouldn’t have been on commission based upon ticket sales – they’d be pulling a salary that would have been paid well before this suit came to light.
Yeah, you’re right. That commenter is fucking stupid.Let’s not pretend Scarlett Johansson is some kind of fucking socialist hero. She was not in the wrong in this instance, but she still sucks shit as a human being.
lol
Sorry, what are you talking about? She wasn’t THAT kind of producer, afaik, and even if she were, those people would have still gotten paid on time.She’s not fucking Robin hood, you weirdo.
No it wasn’t. The people getting scale are getting paid under union agreements, and have absolutely nothing to do with this lawsuit.
Precedent*
What you’ve written here is objectively untrue
I am 1000% sure scojo sued Disney on behalf of the hairdresser and gaffers. She’s just such a fantastic amazing woman of the people, and I’m very certain she’s not profiting one red cent off of the$40 million settlement, at all. God bless Mrs jost-johannsan for her selfless and amazing effort to right the wrongs of our capitalist erroneous ways.
Sorry, but this is ridiculous. ScarJo’s “team”, trainers, hair & makeup, etc., were employees of the film and were already paid by Disney, not by her personally. Her status as a producer has zippo to do with any of that.
Whatever her personal “team” might consist, they are also paid for their services and won’t see a dime of her settlement unless she wants to buy them all nice gifts or something.
ScarJo being rich doesn’t absolve Disney of breaking their contract and then trying to bully her into submission.
Hasn’t this particular horse been made to taste the chain already? Isn’t it long past being capable of tasting anything at this point?
No, it doesn’t absolve them. But millions of middle class people aren’t looking at this and saying “poor Scarlett, she only got $10 million instead of $50 million.” She deserved what was promised, and rightfully got it. But sympathy isn’t going to be forthcoming from the “common folk”.
It’s good that this isn’t about “sympathy”. It’s about not allowing Disney to weaponize your envy to defend their abuse of their employees and contractors.
The “common folks” shouldn’t give a shit about this one way or the other. No one except ScarJo and her lawyers should.
You have no idea what her contract did or didn’t say, but have fun making sweeping statements anyway.
I’m pro-worker all the way up and down the chain. If she were a key grip suing Disney for more money I would back her then too.
The $50,000,000 Key Grip!
I’m pro-worker too, sincere apologies if not-opulently-wealthy-person snark offended
This is like being pro-cop because cops are “workers.” Today’s left is so pathetic.
She’s a worker who was denied what she was owed under a contract. Whether she’s already wealthy or not means nothing. Every employer-employee contract should be honored, and it is foolish to act otherwise.
“Whether she’s already wealthy or not means nothing” Uh yeah it kinda does.
I mean, Disney as a corporation is way more wealthy. They shouldn’t be able to use that wealth to neglect their contractual obligations, even if those obligations are to rich people.
“even if those obligations are to rich people.” What a total failure at understanding the class struggle. No wonder America has no serious labor movement anymore.
At least Colin Jost won’t go hungry now!
I’d love to read that prenup.
What a stupid take.
devastating
it’s a joke, not a take, but stupid people often have trouble discerning between the two
Yes, out of all the people on this thread, I’m the one that looks stupid
French Canadians will complain about anything. I will continue to ignore them.
I grew up in Quebec and… this is fair.
It’s very informative to have this type of content shared. This is very helpful information. Please, keep it coming.https://dlbraj.org/
This has already been horrendously damaging to the Mouse, so I’m not surprised he quietly paid for it to go away. I see a certain section of the internet suggesting Johansson shouldn’t get what she’s owed as per the original agreement “because she is already rich”. Which makes no difference whatsoever imo. And Disney paying her off is an admission of their wrongdoing.
damaging to the Mouse:
lol @ the normies and their super-basic takes on things.no, the lawsuit didn’t just “suddenly” get settled. we are simply not privy to the negotiations that took place. i know, it must be hard to accept this. the only thing that was sudden was the announcement.this is pretty standard industry stuff. why wouldn’t they work again if they were able to settle amicably? that’s just what professionals do. then again, many average people are petulant and emotionally stunted these days so they wouldn’t know anything about that.
If only we showed the kind of outrage about the average Disney worker, but we continue to enable these conglomerates, buying their wares, seeing their overrated movies….https://www.sfgate.com/disneyland/article/Amid-reports-of-homelessness-and-food-insecurity-16461950.php
Some posters are making the sarcastic point about “good for the millionaire getting more millions from the company!” but really, I think a lot of this is about contracts and what is right. If my company decided to one day pay my salary in IKEA vouchers instead of agreed upon USD and then claimed “well, we don’t have the cash on hand, but this is as good as cash so we’re good here”, I would be pretty pissed too. Why? That wasn’t what we agreed to and now I have to go out of my way to correct their shitty mistake. Philosophically, this whole “it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission” mindset that seems to dominate the zeitgeist is a crummy precedent and we only need to look at the idiots over in Silicon Valley (*cough*Theranos*cough*) to see why this is a dangerous precedent. No, obviously ScarJo’s contract is not the life or death situation that Theranos was, but this mentality of shoot first and ask questions later is really just not the way businesses/the government/people should be conducting themselves.
Lots of sniping about rich people getting richer, but forest for the trees…This is really good news if you’re a movie lover. Day-and-date is going to be very, very bad for theaters. If the theater industry goes away, movies themselves will not be what you think of now in a couple years. Disney since Marvel was already the 800-pound gorilla among distributors. After absorbing Fox it is now like the million-ton King Kong (yes, not a Disney property but million-ton King Louie just didn’t work). Disney doesn’t mess around when it comes to making money. This is the best indicator yet that Disney absolutely recognizes that the theatrical window has essential value.
For every article I read claiming that theater attendance will never fully recover, I want to scream at the author “HAVE YOU SEEN HOW PEOPLE BEHAVE THE SECOND RESTRICTIONS ARE LIFTED??”
I just get a kick out of “things have changed forever” prognostications in general.
Covid restrictions and day-and-date are two entirely different balls of wax. Covid is the lesser of the two threats. Theaters will survive it (thanks to SVOG), but even absent significant restrictions it’s far from irrelevant. For what it’s worth, I can tell you the behavior you see on social media is not quite the same picture given by actual bodies through the door over the last 6 months or so.
Theater attendance has been steadily declining for awhile. However, the movie business really took off right after the Spanish Flu cleared out, the theater business exploded in the 1920s.
Streaming will take over from theaters, pandemic or no pandemc. It was bound to happen. For the same reason VCRs no longer exist. A better way was found.
I mean, you can keep making that claim – I see lots of people make that claim – but so far the evidence just isn’t backing you up.
I’m an introvert with social anxiety, I love just being able to watch things in the privacy of my home, but – for a lot of people – streaming just doesn’t replace the theater experience. Will things change? Probably but theaters aren’t going to die.
You mention VCRs, home video didn’t kill the movie theater but it did change the distribution of B-grade schlock. Before home video, a lot of low-budget horror and exploitation films would have been released to drive-ins and cheap, independently owned theaters but that changed. Guys like Charles Band started releasing cheap horror films like Ghoulies and Puppet Master straight-to-video.
I think the distribution of indie films has already changed. A lot of those are releasing simultaneously to streaming, if they even bother with a theatrical release. But I don’t see that happening with stuff like Marvel and Star Wars.
If anything, streaming is forcing television to up the ante because services have to give subscribers a bang for their buck. Game of Thrones was kind of the harbinger of that, television that looks like a big budget motion picture. So – instead of block busters going straight to streaming – I think studios are going to start rethinking whether projects work best as two hour feature films or as 6-8 hour series. Supposedly that’s how The Mandalorian and the upcoming Obi-Wan series came about, Solo didn’t do as well as Disney had hoped and they needed content for their streaming service, so they just turned one of their “A Star Wars Story” projects that was in early development into a series. And then – after the success of The Mandalorian – their Obi-Wan film they were planning got the same treatment.
Agree with all of this. I went to see Bond in the cinema last night and it was packed – I think there will always be some appetite for the communal experience.I think the cool thing is that more film makers probably will take into account that many people are going to be streaming them at home and so we might start to reverse this disappointing trend of films being only a paltry 2.5 / 3 hours long.I mean, I understand the argument that say, Predator, is so good because it is tightly focused and efficiently tells a single story but… wouldn’t it be great if Anna had a cute kid that they have to do a side-quest for? Who wouldn’t want to see Arnie battling a space alien with an adorable rugrat under his arm? Or throw in a musical number!And maybe Rastify him by 10% or so.
I disagree. I watch hundreds of movies a year, sometimes multiple movies a day when I’m really on a roll, and it’s all fine and dandy but it can’t replace the theater experience.
I saw Shang Chi the day it released (I’m fully vaccinated) and the theater was full.
Yes if not for scojo we’d have no more movies in five yearsThank God for scarjo
Biggest media company in the world writes check, makes one of the biggest stars in the world happy, thus ensuring biggest franchise in the world can bring her back from the dead in five years when they need a shot in the arm. If anyone though any of this was anything other then lawyers writing nasty notes so wealth can get shifted between the ultra rich then I’m surprised. This is just people in Hollywood getting paid.
Do you think all of Disney’s cheques have Mickey on them?
Or Scrooge McDuck?
Actually they’re all hand written by Walt himself. He spent the last years of his life creating thousands of blank checks with his signature and “for the betterment of the white race” on them. Once the supply runs out Disney has to rebrand, which is why they’re so reluctant to pay people.
There’s an entire division of people dedicated to crossing out that “betterment of white people” thing after Disney’s diversity initiative. They’ll have work for the next 30 years!
Actually, when the supply of signed checks runs low, they just thaw Walt out and have him sign some more before putting him back in the deep freeze.
Duh it’s just his head that’s frozen
Thank God someone turned this into A racial slander on Walt Disney, who died two hundred years agoPhew I thought it was going to get by without someone managing to make a joke about how somehow it was a white supremacy thing thank God
Yeah, it’s weird how this is being celebrated. Disney broke the terms of a contract. Scarlett called them out on it. There was posturing by Disney’s lawyers because they had to mitigate the damage (which they did by $10m, apparently). Then the two sides settled. Is there a term yet for parasocial attachments to celebrity lawsuits? Because this one brought out quite a few.
In the industry I think it’s kind of a big deal because studios usually get away with minimizing what they owe to people who negotiated back end compensation through creative financial accounting, when in reality they are just screwing people out of money they are owed. This was a clear cut breach of contract that accounting couldn’t protect studios from. Granted most of the “victims” of this behavior are being screwed out of extra millions when they already made millions on the project, but even those people can’t afford the time and resources Disney can to litigate this stuff.
loved seeing people be like ‘we might not get a second season of loki because of this!’ which is the kind of leap in logic an actual baby might make!
Ugh, and Loki really ended on a good note. It’s fine to let stories be one and done!
Disney can afford everything. I don’t mean this lawsuit specifically, I mean everything. They could go back in time to settle all of humanities debts across history and it’d barely affect their bottom line. Their whole business model buying up Marvel and Lucasfilm was throwing around money and it made them even more money.
If I’m going out to brunch with Disney, they’re paying for both my meal and every meal afterward ‘cause they can afford it.
I just did some quick arithmetic, and if I spent $100 per day on meals for the next 60 years, I’d run up a tab of roughly $3.6M, or 0.00003% of the box office on The Last Jedi.
I’ll do one better…Disney bought Lucasfilm for $4 billion. The Force Awakens made $2 billion worldwide, which means Disney saw at least$1 billion from their take of the box office, and then they made $5 billion off merchandising the same year.
They made back their investment with ONE FILM.
Average American:
See, I was relieved, because I thought Loki was terrible.
Me too! It was!
Well I for one am glad we can now all come together and agree that theme park ride based movies are the genre to endlessly worry about for the foreseeable future. Of course, I’ve somehow never been to a theme park… but I still look forward to an adaptation of the teacup ride.
This was always how it was going to end. It was always going to get settled—most cases do, but something this high profile was always always always going to get settled. No surprises here.
I think the real surprise is that Johansson will stick around with Disney after this.
I can think of 40 million reasons why…
I’m not surprised at all. As Sal Tessio would say, this was never personal, just business. Hollywood history is littered with productions that involved parties that had earlier been opponents in a courtroom.
Why is that a surprise? It’s all legal posturing, and if you think there was any real bad blood between the party, I don’t know what to tell you.
All right then, glad we hashed this out.
There are also very few studios left, so cutting yourself off from the biggest one would be…short-sighted at best.
when her team repeatedly reached out to the Mouse lawyers and the Mouse lawyers didn’t engage with her that engendered bad blood, the extent to which she and her team attributed that to Disney itself is probably not a ton but now they hopefully got the message that she is not one with whom to f**k.But really when somebody doesn’t answer your calls or call you back, that’s not a legit business negotiation and does engender bad blood. She was just, I’m sure, able to separate that from the giant trillion dollar playground she still wants to go on the rides at.
I wonder if someone at Disney realized they were in danger of killing the golden Marvel goose and talked the bigwigs into standing down.
And thus ends ScarJo’s brief flirtation with labor rights activism.
Courts will often pressure the parties in a civil suit to reach a settlement (or seek arbitration) because they’re over-burdened and know the lawsuit could take a while to resolve.That said, if I’m ScarJo, I don’t settle because it’s not actually about the money for me—I’m already rich and famous and set for life—it’s about the principle and protecting others without my financial means and stature. But I’m not ScarJo. Alas.
Why do you people all seem convinced that trial court outcomes set some kind of precedent???
The success of Shang-Chi was probably the final nail in the coffin for this one. ScarJo was vindicated, Disney got a big payday–they were ready to move on because there was no good option but to settle and move on ASAP.
I don’t think Shang-Chi had anything to do with it, it still hasn’t even outgrossed Black Widow in theaters. I think it just came down to the exclusive theatrical release terms in her contract.
Um, wrong.Shang Chi: $206M domestic, $386M worldwideBlack Widow: $184M domestic, $378M worldwideAnd Black Widow has been out a lot longer.
Sure – wait a day after I post when the weekend box office results have been announced and call me wrong.
Sorry that I “waited” to catch you in a mistake, but you were wrong even when you posted this, as Shang Chi didn’t make $22M this week-end.
I never said “domestic” theaters in my original post and your first reply to me even includes international numbers so the $22m you cited doesn’t make sense other than to skew your argument again. And prior to this weekend, Shang-Chi was slightly behind BW in worldwide gross.And all that aside, my original point was basically that Shang-Chi isn’t doing so much better than BW that it makes sense to conclude Disney realized they were wrong to stream BW. If you added in the money Disney made on D+, BW is still doing much better than Shang-Chi and that’s without even considering that Disney doesn’t have to split streaming revenue on their own service with theaters. And yes, I know Shang-Chi has time left in theaters and maybe it will make another $30-40m. Point doesn’t really change still.
Your point that “Shang Chi isn’t doing that well wasn’t a factor” is straight up wrong, since the movie is doing extremely well and even without you pedantically parsing the grosses, is doing demonstrably better than BW, which has had three full months in theaters to Shang Chi’s one.
I never said the movie wasn’t doing well – it obviously is given the context of the pandemic. I went to see it myself, first movie I have seen in theaters since pandemic started.I just said that I doubt its gross is a driving factor in Disney settling this lawsuit because Black Widow made very similar amounts of money and also because Scarlett’s contract reportedly saying BW would have an exclusive theatrical release is the obvious reason why the lawsuit got settled. I also already acknowledged in my last post that Shang-Chi has some time left but it’s not going to make significantly more in its second and third months in theaters than it already has and whatever it does make will surely be less than what BW made streaming. The movie is still a definite success but the way OP phrased it, you would think the movie did so well that there was no question that an exclusive theatrical release was best way to go. I don’t see how you that argument gets made.
The first movie I saw was Black Widow. 🙂
It was always in Disney’s best interest to settle this lawsuit quickly but with an IATSE strike highly possible — and streaming revenues being one of the major areas of contention — it became an absolute necessity. Regardless, both above and below the line cast and crew will want their share of the streaming dollars.
It was clear from the getgo that in order to go all the way through this lawsuit Disney was going to have to produce granular detail on their streaming revenue that they pretend not to have and fucking definitely have. That was never going to happen, and the attorneys who put them in this position should be tarred and feathered.And then there was the IATSE blow up over studios pretending they don’t make money from streaming so below the line people have to take a PAY CUT, so it really calls out for the head of whoever got them in this mess. (One other time I remember seeing a major corporation make this big a mistake was when Marissa Mayer took over Yahoo and immediately said everybody needed to come back into the office…so anybody who could take another job-everybody worth keeping because somebody else wants to hire them-took off!)Lol, people are so ready to blame ScarJo for everything I bet everyone will get umptious that she didn’t make settlement with IATSE a condition of her settlement.
Reminds me of a client I once had. During the financial crisis in 2008-09, they decided they needed to cut cost so they offered a lucrative package to those who would voluntarily leave. Ended up being something like a year of salary + other perks. The only real stipulation was those who took it could never come back as full-time employees. The client thought this would prevent people who were vital from leaving.Of course, the opposite happened. The best people took the package because they were the ones who could easily find jobs elsewhere, especially with a year of cushion. The average to poor employees stayed and were given 2-3x the responsibility to cover for people who left. And then when the crisis subsided, this client ended up having to pay some of their former employees consulting rates to come back and help out because they couldn’t hire them back due to their own stupid rule.Always cracks me up when I think about it.
I love stories like that, thanks for sharing…I mean it’s a little different because the client you are talking about sounds like they were being really nice given the circumstances but having worked for so many places that crush their good employees and let the bad ones slide it’s always fascinating to hear what management believes will be an incentive for whom
You bunch of jerks!!! She makes a couple movies and gets millions and it’s not enough! What about Mickey?? He built that damn company and what films has he been in lately?!?!?!? None! None films. Why can’t he be an Avenger?? Hmmm? Oh you know why! You make me wanna wretch with your anti mouse agenda!!
Colin can finally get a decent haircut!
Good for her.
Little Cosmo needs a college fund!
HAWKEYE NEEDS BRACES
If they had released it the way she wanted it would have made the same box office, just without the extra 150million streaming dollars. The people who paid for streaming did so because they did not want to go to a theater. And since Disney was paying her the same % for streaming revenue, she actually made more than she would have if they had done theaters only.
Good for her!
Good for her!
Don’t draft and sign contracts if you plan to break them, Diz. Then don’t come up with some lame, brain-dead, lying attempt to associate the plaintiff with COVID indifference, which most people with brains saw through while they were still reading it.The integrity of covenants and contracts is important to a functioning society.
I’ve always assumed that, like Scrooge McDuck, Disney has a vault of gold coins that executives occasionally go swimming in, and that paying someone 40M to squash some static isn’t any more effort than a guy backing a truck up to the spigot on said vault.
In short, I doubt this was a difficult decision for them.
I love all the armchair lawyers trying to analyze a contract they’ve never read, and have no idea what’s really in it.
Good for her. I’m a huge proponent of streaming over theaters right now, but talent should be compensated for it.
You goobers were just so precious, thinking this wouldn’t be settled by a big fat check.
Total dumb.
Ho Hum.
And today’s big news. I had Coffee.
Money wasn’t the reason they settled. It’s Disney. They have all the money. This was about the talent.
One of the greatest strengths of the MCU — perhaps the greatest strength — is the casting. Not just the core characters, but that they’ve been able to get rarely-acting actors like Douglas, Bening, Fishburne, Hopkins, Paltrow, Russo, and so on to eagerly agree to appear onscreen. These aren’t people who just sign on to things because they’re bored. The money’s great, sure, but they sign the contract knowing that they’ll get a satisfying role alongside that massive payday.
And so, the Eternals drew two “I never need to act again” actors — Jolie and Hayek — and that’s a huge win for the MCU. Being seen to be hostile to talent would be a disaster for Marvel Studios, because people like the aforementioned would never agree to do something they probably otherwise wouldn’t have done if they thought they’d be treated poorly in the aftermath.
The actors you name as “rarely” or “never need to work” including Hayek (spy kids 4), Michael Douglas (the kominsky method), fishburne (predators)and Hopkins (I saw him in something with Bruce Willis recently), to name a sampling literally make straight to DVD c-list movies for paychecks REGULARLY. It makes the rest of your argument hard to accept a bit
Life is like a hurricane Here in Disney
“It’s hard not to see that as a pretty unequivocal win for Johansson…”Ppfftt, that’s a win for Disney. It could have been a whooooole lot more.And the verbiage, spewed through the PR machines is interesting. It basically says this:
“We’re proud of our work together in the MCU and look forward to future stuff that is NOT in the MCU.”
I’ve just never understood, with this whole thing, why it’s supposed to be on Disney to eat all of the losses?I don’t see why everyone else should get paid as though it made as much as it would have had COVID not happened.If I’m in Vegas, playing a slot machine, and the power goes out mid spin, I certainly wouldn’t expect to get paid as though the spin would have been the jackpot.
Her contract specifically said the movie would have an exclusive theatrical release. It did not. It’s a cut and dry breach of contract on Disney’s part. That’s why she reportedly got paid the majority of what she asked for despite the movie not doing as well as it might have pre-pandemic.
He just needs to get better lawyers next time he plays the slots.
Would it have done better pre-pandemic tho? This is the burning question. I for one thought it was a steaming pile of shit of a film. But what do I know, spin the wheel of fortune!
There still exists the angle that this was a bad film and ScarJo used this situation as an excuse to get more money than she would have, had the pandemic never happened. Idk. I’m not expert, but Im also an MCU fanatic who thinks Black Widow was prehaps the worst film addition to the canon? Perhaps?
Even to argue that Shang-Chi’s numbers would have been similar to Black Widow’s is ridiculous. That’s basically stating that any Marvel film must be that specific standard when we all know Black Widow was incredibly sub-par.
This film would have been fine back during Civil War but I was left confused that Id even spent time to watch it during the current MCU era.
ANYTHING MARVEL BRAND MUST MAKE THE SAME MONEY OR DOES NOT COMMUTE.
Lol at all the non lawyers here waxing eloquent about a contract they’ve never read and a situation they have no insight into.
Congrats to Colin Jost as well!
Good for her!
I am glad she won. Good for her (bad movie though).