Scarlett Johansson sues Disney over Black Widow streaming release

Following a wait of over a year and tons of hype, the recent release of Marvel Studio’s Black Widow finally has some official box office figures. And, as expected, compared to other MCU projects, it leaves a lot to be desired.

That said, previous movies didn’t have the devastating effects of a global pandemic to contend with. One huge difference for Black Widow was the the duel release on the PVOD (Premium Video On-Demand) tier on Disney+, which allowed fans to pay $30 to watch the movie at home rather than go to the theater. That move didn’t go down well with everyone, including IMAX CEO Rich Gelfond, who placed blame on Disney for the “cannibalization” of the movie’s box office.

Firstly, let’s take a look at the numbers. According to figures provided by Variety, the movie generated over $80 million (estimated to be as high as $87 million) at the US box office during its opening weekend. For reference, this easily surpassed F9‘s previous pandemic record of a measly $70 million. As for non-US markets, it scored a further $78 million.

And then we have Disney+’s PVOD. It’s rare for streaming services to disclose these figures, although the House of Mouse has revealed that it made in excess of $60 million from this new Pandemic-driven form of distribution. At the moment, Black Widow has made $318 million around the world; we don’t know how much Disney made from the streaming release.

“Every studio has seen the same data that Disney has seen. What Disney did is experiment during the pandemic, which is what they said they were going to do,” Gelfond told Deadline about the new release format. “I remember [Disney CEO] Bob Chapek saying at one of their investor days that when times are normal, he thinks theatrical is important, exclusivity is important…I think when he looks at his data and the pandemic is in the rearview mirror that he’ll come to the same conclusion that everyone else does: The way to maximize value is to have a theatrical window.”

The effect of piracy on Black Widow

With the dawn of PVOD for huge movie releases comes the issue of piracy. It now becomes a whole lot easier for folks to simply pirate the movies and watch them from the comfort of their home without splashing the cash. “There’s really no question in my mind that the combination of PVOD and a lot of piracy—people haven’t really talked about it that much—clearly there’s a lot of piracy that accounted for the cannibalization, and it significantly effected the box office at the end of the day,” Gelfond said.

As with anything, the advent of PVOD has its positives and negatives. But considering the ease of piracy, there’s a lot of money to be lost.

Scarlett Johansson sues Disney for breach of contract

Gelfond isn’t the only one cheesed off about the duel release strategy. The Wall Street Journal reports that none other than Scarlett Johansson — Natasha Romanoff herself — is suing Disney for releasing Black Widow this way when it promised her to release it in theaters only.

“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,” the complaint reads. It also alleges that Johansson and her team wanted to renegotiate the terms of her contract after they found out about the day-and-date release strategy — her pay was tied to box office performance — but that Disney and Marvel didn’t respond. All told, releasing Black Widow on streaming may have cost Johansson $50 million.

Black Widow release date on Digital, DVD and Blu-ray

In some lighter news, Disney has confirmed release dates for several different editions of Black Widow. You can purchase the movie via digital on August 10, while physical versions — including 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, and DVD — arrive later on September 14.

The physical editions contain all the usual bonus features and all of nine deleted scenes to enjoy!

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h/t IndieWire