Scarlett Johansson sues Disney over streaming release of "Black Widow"

They could argue Shang-Chi's 3-day gross was still lower than Black Widow's. So if D+ grosses were taking away from theatrical, why did it still gross less than Black Widow despite no D+ release?

If ScarJo says her character was more well-known so it should've grossed higher, they can say Black Panther and Captain Marvel grossed more than the recent Ant-Man, Spider-Man and Thor movies because they were new characters.

 

Shang -chi?
Trailer didn’t do anything for me.

 

Looks like a Loud noisy time at the movies. Kids don’t care. My friend invited me over to his house to watch him play his favorite new video game. Favorite new video game? They’re all the exactly the same game: run around and shoot people. They’re all the same goddamn thing. No wonder kids don’t care what’s in a film except to see people run around and shoot each other and crash things. That’s all they need to watch in video games. So boring.

 

The ironic thing with BW is the film focuses on her sister a lot. Give the English actress the $$$

 

Manga: arm chopped of .. blood gushing.
Not even interested in sexy stuff. Lol

 

Sorry, a woman hero will never gross as high as a man at the movies. Young men crave the kind of physical heroism that film is excellent at depicting in a visceral way. It’s the hero mystique that still fuels storytelling in the cinema and creates legends: Hans Solo, Indiana Jones, James Bond, Hoppaling Cassidy, Cary Grant, Star-lord, Captain America, Errol Flynn, Jean-Paul Belmondo(!), Ironman…. Give a young man a hero to idolize and you’ve created an icon to be faithfully followed.

 

Not always true, Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel grossed a lot higher than other superhero movies.

 

Least WW had gams.
Looks like WW debut film was a novelty hit.

 

Even if that were true - women and girls go to the movies too. It's not only young men.

I personally always loved to see female action heroes. My favourite superhero(ine) may be Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.

 

Angelina Jolie did well as an action lead for a while.

Tomb Raider $274.7 million
Mr. & Mrs. Smith $487.3 million
Wanted $342.5 million
Salt $293.5 million

 

On a related subject, Disney just announced (based on the success of Shang-Chi) that all the rest of their 2021 films will be premiere exclusively in theaters and not on streaming:

Disney Announces Theatrical Exclusivity for Remaining 2021 Films: Eternals, West Side Story, Encanto, Ron's Gone Wrong, The King's Man, The Last Duel

I think this adds to Ms. Johansson's case, since Black Widow wasn't given the benefit of that kind of release.

And in other news, it looks like Chris Evans is willing to come back and be Captain America again -- even though he's either dead or 106 years old:

Exclusive: Chris Evans' Payday For Captain America Return Revealed

The trick is, it'll cost Disney $100 million upfront to get him. He's clearly taking no chances in light of the last-minute contract/accounting games the studio played over the summer.

 

I saw Shang-Chi yesterday and it didn't really resonate as a Marvel film. It might as well have been Disney and not had the Marvel branding. Especially with all the cutesy critters.

My kid will be happy to hear that. Was really upset when he passed the baton...er...shield to the Falcon at the end of Endgame. Compared to many other MCU films, I never liked the Cap movies anyway, so I'm ambivalent about the news. Looks like both the stars and the studio are learning some lessons from the ScarJo fiasco.

 

Shang -Chi... walked out near the end.
Best bit was Ben Kingsley ( playing Ringo).

 

If you release it exclusively in theaters, it will make a whole bunch more money.

 

Now that’s great news.

 

There’s always extra scenes during the end credits, y’know.

 

I think Chris Evans deliberately named a price so outrageous, Disney would choke before agreeing to it. But as the article said, Robert Downey made more than $70M (with percentages) from Avengers: Endgame, so there is a precedent for it.

I dunno if anybody knows the history of Hollywood salaries, but a lot of this started back in 1984, when Stallone got a whopping $12 million for the terrible action film Over the Top. That was considered the highest actor's fee ever until a decade later, when Jim Carrey got an unbelievable $20 million for Cable Guy in 1995. (And Jack Nicholson didn't do badly as the Joker in 1989's Batman, where he got an estimated $10 million for acting and another $40 million for merchandising.) So this trend has been going on for a long time.

I think Disney/Marvel has a lot of other stories to tell, and it would kind of upset the apple cart to go back to Captain America at this point, especially for that kind of money. But anything is possible in Hollywoo.

 

Was aware ..

Wasn’t interested as the film was so excruciatingly bad. Felt like a 6 certificate, Disney soft toys esqe. Lot of Asians in my screening( an audience, i guess).I found nothing redeeming about the film.. even the actors irritated me the loudmouth girlfriend, and the sister looked 45, lol. End scene.. dragons, gimme a break.

 

Only two actors I’m interested in is Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth.Just hope there’s no more cutesy pie now that Disney’s on board ... see Shang- Chi.

 

Apropos of nothing, I finally saw Black Widow. I had low expectations given the mixed reviews but I thought it was great. A bit of a return to form after some very mediocre movies that had me wondering if Marvel had anything left in the creative tank. I guess I am in the minority but I thought it rocked. I doubt we'll see many more girl powered super hero movies though, given the tepid response, which is too bad. I remain Team Scarlett though. I think Disney bungled this one badly.

 

I don't really think the response was tepid. It's still the highest-grossing movie domestically of 2021, and everything has to be graded on a curve this year. Also the third-highest U.S. film internationally, after F9 and Godzilla, which it was never expected to beat. It's also up to at least $500 million when streaming revenue is added in. I also saw a lot of people saying that the Steelbook 4K is selling out at Best Buy this week, and it's sold out in my state according to the web site.

It rates a 6.8 on IMDB, which is very low for the MCU, but almost a third of the reviews were 7s. And then a lot of 6s and 8s. Very few gave it ratings under 6, and very few over 8. The scores look better over on Rotten Tomatoes though, with a 91% audience score. It sort of reflects that everyone liked the movie enough to give it thumbs up, which is what Rotten Tomatoes goes by, up or down, but maybe IMDB shows they're saying they thought it was good but not great. Most of the gripes seemed to be fanboy-style complaints though, how it diverged from the comics or simply complaining that it didn't impact the direction of the MCU because it's a flashback movie.

Overall, Black Widow was received much better than Wonder Woman 84. That one is a bigger chink in the armor to female-led superhero movies. And very unfortunate for DC who is struggling to find footing with its film universe, and had been off to a great start with the Wonder Woman franchise.

At any rate, the MCU looks to be very female-lead-heavy coming up. The next Thor is supposed to have Jane Foster taking over the mantle of Thor. I'm not sure what's happening with Black Panther, but I think some people expect one of the women to inherit the throne. The Marvels is a triple-female-led sequel to Captain Marvel. The next Ant-Man and the Wasp will have the Wasp co-starring again. And Disney+ has TV series for Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk, and Ironheart coming up. Most of that stuff is in 2022, so major female parts will be very prominent in the MCU in the near future, in greater proportion next year than in the past for sure.

DC has Batgirl and Black Canary HBO Max movies announced. It sounds like a Supergirl theatrical film is scheduled also, after she is introed in The Flash. Wonder Woman 3 was announced...and there is various development hell status on Amazons, Zatanna and Gotham City Sirens. The Shazam sequel has female heroes returning, and apparently three major actresses cast as the "daughters of Atlas."

 

Thanks for schooling me Jedi Jones. Color me enlightened!

 

I’d give BW a 6/10, same as WW84.. which sadly means I don’t double dip.. and purchase media version.

 

Wow. Well everyone is different. For me, with WW84, I had to find something to like because overall, it was a huge letdown from the first one. For Black Widow, it was just the opposite. The occasional clunky bit didn't bother me because overall I thought it ripped. I am absolutely terrible at assigning rating values though. I tend to lowball. For this type of genre stuff though, it just has to entertain me. I'm probably fairly easy to please in that regard.

 

And today, the massive Hollywoo talent agency Endeavor made a statement:

"...the company “has created a formula, and each one will change over time.” Specifically, compensation plans may vary depending on whether the movie gets an exclusive theatrical release, a day-and-date release, or goes to subscription streaming platforms only."

Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel on UFC, Movie Star Pay – The Hollywood Reporter

So basically, they're saying to studios "you're not going to sandbag our clients by suddenly changing the release strategy at the last minute. If you go directly to theaters and later on to streaming/home video, our client gets X amount; if you go to streaming first, our client gets Y amount -- but is fairly compensated." I believe this is going to be the standard deal for all A-list actors from now on.

Because nobody had anticipated the pandemic affecting the release of Black Widow in Scarlett Johanssen's contract two years ago, I think she didn't get the benefit of this. If Disney were smart, they'd settle with her fast rather than run the risk of opening up all of their contract/compensation mishigas for the world to see.