Scarlett Johansson sued Disney for the streaming release of "Black Widow"

Scarlett Johansson has sued Disney over the company's choice to distribute Marvel's new film, Black Widow, simultaneously in theaters and on its own Disney+ streaming platform. According to the contract signed by the actress, in fact, a percentage related to the results of the film box office had to be added to her salary for the film – while the digital release of the film, albeit through the Premium service of Disney +, will reduce that figure enormously. The WSJ has in fact predicted that the double release could take away from the actress a gain of 50 million dollars. According to Johansson's lawyers:

«Disney knew that the cannibalization of [box office receipts] by Disney+ would save Marvel (and by extension, Disney) ‘very large’ amounts of money that it would otherwise owe Ms. Johansson».

Disney's lawyers responded by calling into question Covid-19 and mentioning the fact that not everyone can or wants to go to the cinema with the pandemic still underway, and that, above all, the contractual obligations between the studios and the actress have been respected. The legal problem, however, lies in the details of the contract which, according to initial assessments, remained ambiguous about the modalities of exclusive theatrical distribution – even though Johansson's lawyers argue that the very term "film distribution" implies exclusive distribution in physical cinemas. 

This case is just the latest piece of a larger controversy that has animated Hollywood on how to distribute films, which are starting to become increasingly hybrid through streaming platforms, but attracting the strong disapproval of authors and directors such as Christopher Nolan and Denis Villeneuve.