re: Scarlett Johansson Sues Disney Over ‘Black Widow’ Streaming Release

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Studios will always factor in how problematic an actor is before signing them on to a project. Litigation is just as big a lodestone as being unprofessional or substance abuse, IMHO.

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True but I'm thinking quite a few actors and directors are about to start suing the studios over this stuff.

Denzel Washington was pissed about The Little Things getting a day and date release on HBOMax. LINK John Krasinski and Emily Blunt are angry at Paramount for cutting the theatrical run of A Quiet Place II in half from 90 days to 45 days in order to put it on Paramount+. LINK Mark Wahlberg was also upset that Paramount decided to skip a theatrical release entirely for Infinite and then didn't even bother to let him know until the day before they put out a press release. LINK Christopher Nolan was so angry at WB for putting Tenet on HBOMax he's probably never going to work with them again. LINK

It would be one thing had these movie deals been made with the idea they would be streaming at the same time they were in theaters or would have short theatrical runs and then go straight to streaming. But to unilaterally change the release strategy and then refuse to compensate the people who had their pay contingent on reaching certain box office numbers is extremely poor form.

This was available as a $30 add-on to D+. So there was most definitely steaming income directly attributable to the film.

This isn’t like Soul being released for free on D+ or WW84 on HBO Max.

It's a freaking crime that Dune isn't a theater exclusive

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It would be one thing had these movie deals been made with the idea they would be streaming at the same time they were in theaters or would have short theatrical runs and then go straight to streaming. But to unilaterally change the release strategy and then refuse to compensate the people who had their pay contingent on reaching certain box office numbers is extremely poor form.

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All of this, and just to add - there’s also the matter of precedent. The entire big-budget film industry business model is changing, and I suspect a lot of the ongoing strife is about the various parties trying to set the status quo.

Disney is charging $29.99 to stream Black Widow right now. Plus the D+ subscription. Granted, you have multiple people watching a stream. But how much money from a $9.00 ticket at the actual theater makes it back to Disney? There’s a supply chain involved, including the theater itself. Let’s say Disney collects $8.00 from each ticket for the sake of argument.

If you had an average of two viewers per stream, that would be $30 compared to $16 at the movie theater. Almost double the revenue without counting the Disney+ subscriptions. Now let’s say, again for the sake of argument, that 50% of potential viewers choose to stream instead of going to the theater. That means for every $100 worth of box office revenue under the old system, you now have $50 worth of box office revenue and $94 worth of streaming revenue.

So if you’re an actor/actress with an incentive based on box office sales, your cut gets reduced by 50% while Disney’s top line revenue increases by nearly 50%. Your incentive as a percentage of sales basically got reduced to 1/3 of its previous value. That’s a massive redistribution and I imagine the actors/actresses/directors/writers/etc. that are paid this way will fight tooth and nail to prevent it.

I’m fuzzy on the exact math right now but I think the rough number on what the studio gets on the theatrical gross is 50%.

That is in part dependent on which week of release a film is in, as the studio gets a bigger cut of the first few weeks than it does if the film has legs and stays in theaters for a year like Titanic. Paramount still made money but the percentage on week 52 was far lower than week 5.

That also doesn’t go into the costs of distribution for a theatrical release vs a digital release. A theatrical release requires prints be struck and sent out OR be sent as digital downloads to the theater. Streaming on a service requires far less in the way of resources.


TLDR, you are correct that Disney nets far more on a $30 purchase through D+ than it would for people buying 2-3 theatrical tickets because of all the costs it doesn’t have to pay due to owning the film and the streaming service.

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TLDR, you are correct that Disney nets far more on a $30 purchase through D+ than it would for people buying 2-3 theatrical tickets because of all the costs it doesn’t have to pay due to owning the film and the streaming service.

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Sure, but you also lose out on money because of piracy. Black Widow has been hit hard by piracy.

She pissed she’s losing that big mcu payday
And now Disney will blackball her

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They tried to pull a fast on in her and reduce her back end,

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Let's be honest, if I were messing around in her back end, it would be a fast one too

Disney won't blacklist her. This will settle amicably.

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Disney won't blacklist her. This will settle amicably.

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Agreed. Disney is making a killing with Marvel cinematics right now. This draws big names and those big names draw more interest.

Scarlett is one of the biggest names in Hollywood right now, shitting on her so publicly would cause a lot of trouble with the big names who may be about to sign and whose contracts are coming up for renewal.

Also, you just know some group would pop up to propone the idea that Disney did it to her only because they thought they could get away with it because she's a woman. If they'll drop Carano over the faux-rage of a fairly innocuous tweet, they'll move heaven and earth to not be cast as misogynistic.