I got support from strangers that have no skin in the game at all.” “I could see that it had a bigger impact. “I couldn’t even walk through a restaurant without somebody saying, ‘Good for you. In some ways, the battle between Johansson and the media giant offers a precursor to the writers strike now roiling the industry. (Taylor took Fox to court in 1964 for not being properly paid for “Cleopatra,” and settled for $7 million - or roughly $60 million in today’s dollars.) But Johansson became the first high-profile star to stare down a behemoth in the streaming era, and her suit continues to reverberate in Hollywood and beyond as deep-pocketed corporations use the cover of the pandemic to squeeze employees. In the history of Hollywood, the stars who have successfully sued studios are few and mostly men, from Burt Lancaster to Kevin Costner to Sylvester Stallone, with Olivia de Havilland and Elizabeth Taylor being rare exceptions. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Johansson’s payout reportedly eclipsed $40 million. Two months later, around the same time Cosmo was cracking his first smiles, Johansson and Disney settled the suit. And part of the reason she did it is because she thought, in the position she’s in, she had a responsibility not just to herself but to other people who were being confronted with this change.” And she had the conviction to let me fight back. “She and I were very much in lockstep about what this was. “I lost my mind and said, ‘How dare you make it seem like she’s not worth this money or that she somehow hasn’t earned it?’” he recalls. By all appearances, the studio had declared war on an actress who played Russian assassin Natasha Romanoff in eight of its Marvel tentpoles, starting with 2010’s “Iron Man 2,” and is a corporate super fan to boot, the kind who spent a recent Christmas with a group of 15 friends at Disney World.īy contrast, Johansson’s agent, Bryan Lourd, was anything but distracted. In response to the suit, the studio took off the gloves and released a jaw-dropping statement that slammed Johansson for her “callous disregard for the horrific and prolonged global effects of the COVID-19 pandemic” and casually revealed her tightly guarded $20 million upfront salary. Adding insult to injury, Disney - then led by CEO Bob Chapek - bragged that “Black Widow” generated more than $60 million in Disney+ Premier Access global sales in a bid to juice its stock price. The breach was clear-cut, given that her contract contained a stipulation that the “Avengers” spinoff be released exclusively in theaters. The actress was quarantining in her Upper East Side apartment, days away from giving birth to Cosmo, her second child, when she filed an explosive lawsuit against the studio shortly after the release of its Marvel prequel “Black Widow.”įor the previous six months, Johansson’s team had worked behind the scenes to push the studio to make good on the millions of dollars in backend compensation she would forgo when it released “Black Widow” simultaneously on Disney+ and in theaters as the pandemic raged. Case in point: She shocked the industry in July 2021 by stepping into the ring with Disney, the most powerful entity in Hollywood. I would say it’s her greatest strength.”Īs she’s become a bigger and bigger star, Johansson has grown more comfortable raising that voice when she feels she’s been screwed over. The auteur has worked with enough A-list talent to fill a Met Gala - from Meryl Streep to George Clooney to Cate Blanchett - but he acknowledges that star power is somewhat of a mystery. With Johansson, who plays a luminous 1950s movie icon in his film “Asteroid City,” the director thinks he knows the secret: “Scarlett’s voice is so expressive and interesting. Wes Anderson could say the same about Scarlett Johansson, his latest leading lady. Scott Fitzgerald famously described Daisy Buchanan, his “Great Gatsby” heroine, as having a voice that’s “full of money.”
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