Black Widow (Movie)

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    Scarlett Johansson Sues Disney Over ‘Black Widow’ Release

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    The star said making the film available on Disney+ at the same time it opened in theaters “dramatically” lowered box office revenue, which could cost her tens of millions of dollars.Never cross a super-assassin: Scarlett Johansson, who has played the Marvel character Black Widow in eight blockbuster films, sued the Walt Disney Company on Thursday over its pandemic-era streaming strategy. The lawsuit marked a sharp escalation in a festering standoff between movie actors and media companies over compensation in the streaming age.The complaint, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, claims that Disney breached her contract when it released “Black Widow” simultaneously in theaters and on Disney+ earlier this month. Ms. Johansson’s suit said that Disney had promised that “Black Widow” would receive an exclusive release in theaters for approximately 90 to 120 days and that her compensation — based largely on bonuses tied to ticket sales — was gutted as a result of the hybrid release. Simultaneous availability on Disney+, where subscribers could watch the film instantly (and have permanent access to it) for a $30 surcharge, “dramatically decreased box office revenue,” Ms. Johansson said in the suit.“There is no merit whatsoever to this filing,” Disney said in a statement.Over its first three days in theaters, “Black Widow” collected $158 million at theaters worldwide and took in about $60 million on Disney+ Premier Access. Total ticket sales now stand at $327 million, the lowest total for a Marvel Studios release since 2008, when “The Incredible Hulk” collected $265 million (or $341 million in today’s dollars). Disney has not given a running total for Disney+ sales of “Black Widow.”Making “Black Widow” available on Disney+ could cost Ms. Johansson more than $50 million, according to two people briefed on her contract, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private agreement. That is how much Ms. Johansson would have made if “Black Widow” had approached $1 billion in global ticket sales; “Captain Marvel” and “Black Panther” both exceeded that threshold in prepandemic release.Films released during the pandemic — including those that have received exclusive theatrical releases — have largely disappointed at the box office, with many consumers demonstrating a reluctance to return to theaters. The entire film ecosystem has been hurt as a result: cinema chains, stars, studios.Disney has cited the coronavirus as a reason for releasing movies like “Black Widow” simultaneously in theaters and on Disney+ Premier Access.Jay Maidment/Marvel Studios, via Disney“First, Disney wanted to lure the picture’s audience away from movie theaters and towards its own streaming service, where it could keep the revenues for itself while simultaneously growing the Disney+ subscriber base, a proven way to boost Disney’s stock price,” the suit, which was first reported on by The Wall Street Journal, claimed. “Second, Disney wanted to substantially devalue Ms. Johansson’s agreement and thereby enrich itself.”Disney’s statement called the lawsuit “especially sad and distressing in its callous disregard for the horrific and prolonged global effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.” The company added, “Disney has fully complied with Ms. Johansson’s contract and furthermore, the release of ‘Black Widow’ on Disney+ with Premier Access has significantly enhanced her ability to earn additional compensation on top of the $20 million she has received to date.”“Black Widow” was initially scheduled for exclusive theatrical release in May of last year. Disney ended up postponing the film’s release three times as the pandemic dragged on.Disney, citing the ongoing coronavirus threat, ultimately decided to release several major movies simultaneously in theaters and on Disney+ Premier Access. It used the strategy in May for “Cruella,” which starred Emma Stone and took in $221 million worldwide. (Disney has kept Disney+ revenue for “Cruella” a secret.) On Friday, Disney will give the same treatment to “The Jungle Cruise,” a comedic adventure that stars Emily Blunt and Dwayne Johnson. It is not known if Ms. Stone, Ms. Blunt or Mr. Johnson renegotiated their contracts with Disney as a result.In December, WarnerMedia kicked a hornet’s nest by abruptly announcing that more than a dozen Warner Bros. movies — the studio’s entire 2021 slate — would each arrive in theaters and on HBO Max. The decision prompted an outcry from major stars and their agents over the potential loss of box office-related compensation, forcing Warner Bros. to make new deals. It ultimately paid roughly $200 million to thwart the rebellion.The deeper question is this: If old-line studios are no longer trying to maximize the box office for each film but instead shifting to a hybrid model where success is judged partly by ticket sales and partly by the number of streaming subscriptions sold, what does that mean for how stars are paid — and where they make their movies?The traditional model, the one that studios have used for decades to make high-profile film deals, involves paying small fees upfront and then sharing a portion of the revenue from ticket sales. The bigger the hit, the bigger the “back end” paydays for certain actors, directors and producers.The streaming giants have done it differently. They pay more upfront — usually much, much more — in lieu of any back-end payments, which gives them complete control over future revenue. It means that people get paid as if their projects are hits before they are released (or even made).Ms. Johansson’s suit also took direct aim at Bob Chapek, Disney’s chief executive, and Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chairman, by citing the stock grants given to them as rewards for building Disney+, which has more than 100 million subscribers worldwide. “Disney’s financial disclosures make clear that the very Disney executives who orchestrated this strategy will personally benefit from their and Disney’s misconduct,” the complaint said.According to the suit, Ms. Johansson’s representatives approached Disney and Marvel in recent months with a request to renegotiate her contract. “Disney and Marvel largely ignored Ms. Johansson,” the suit said. More

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      ‘Black Widow’ | Anatomy of a Scene

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      Film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera.Film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera. More

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      'Black Widow' a Hit in Theaters and Streaming on Disney+

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      There has been a lot of hand-wringing about the demise of movie theaters over the past year and a half, and for good reason. Most were closed for at least a few months during the height of the pandemic. Companies like the Walt Disney Company, NBCUniversal, WarnerMedia and Viacom have started to prioritize streaming for their films, in part to bolster subscriber interest in their own Netflix-style platforms.Over the weekend came evidence that, at least for the biggest franchise films and with a carefully calibrated pricing strategy, theatrical distribution and streaming can coexist.At least for now.“Black Widow,” a long-delayed Marvel movie, collected about $80 million in the United States and Canada from Thursday night to Sunday for Disney. Overseas, the superhero movie sold an additional $78 million in tickets. That means that, in total, roughly 17 million people went to see the movie in a theater, according to Rich Greenfield, a founder of the LightShed Partners research firm. After giving theater owners their cut of ticket sales, Disney cleared about $98 million over the weekend, Mr. Greenfield calculated.Disney also made “Black Widow” available on its Disney+ streaming service, which has more than 100 million subscribers worldwide. Subscribers could instantly watch the film (and have permanent access to it) for a $30 surcharge. Disney said on Sunday that Disney+ generated about $60 million from “Black Widow” orders over the weekend. Mr. Greenfield said that figure equated to about two million transactions and about $48 million in revenue for Disney after streaming partners had taken their cut. (The benefit to Disney in the form of new subscribers to Disney+ is unknown; subscriptions cost $8 a month.)There are several takeaways. “Imagine being a theater owner and realizing studios need you less and less everyday,” Mr. Greenfield wrote on Twitter. “Leverage is shifting rapidly in the streaming era toward the studios.”On the other hand, the fact that 17 million people decided to leave their bubbles and go sit with strangers in a theater — amid rising coronavirus infections, the result of the Delta variant — when they could just push a button in their living rooms is nothing to sneeze at. For now, theatrical distribution remains a major revenue generator and cannot be ignored if studios want to make money on big-budget spectacles.“This is an extremely impressive theatrical opening,” David A. Gross, who runs Franchise Entertainment Research, a movie consultancy, said in an email. “Certainly the figure would be higher if every theater were open, if there were zero concern with Covid and if there weren’t a streaming option. For now, those impediments make the ‘Black Widow’ opening all the more impressive.” More

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      ‘Black Widow’ Star David Harbour Loves Being a Big-Screen Loser

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      The actor talks about his roles as a failed superhero in the new Marvel blockbuster and as a milquetoast accountant in Steven Soderbergh’s “No Sudden Move.”This article contains spoilers for the films “Black Widow” and “No Sudden Move.”It’s never a particularly good time to be a loser, but it’s an excellent moment to be David Harbour, who embodies misbegotten characters so fully in his latest movies.Harbour, who may be best known as the reluctantly heroic police chief Jim Hopper on Netflix’s “Stranger Things,” can currently be seen in “Black Widow,” the Marvel movie directed by Cate Shortland that opened over the weekend. In it, he plays Alexei, a Russian super-soldier who formerly led a thrilling life as the costumed champion Red Guardian. Now confined to a wintry prison where he has become feral and overweight, all he can do is reminisce about good old days that may not have happened as he remembers them. That is, until his rescue by Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) and Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), the spies he raised as his own daughters.Alexei is the latest in a series of strangely compelling deadbeats for Harbour. He also appears in Steven Soderbergh’s new HBO Max thriller, “No Sudden Move,” as Matt Wertz, a milquetoast accountant drawn into a criminal enterprise that’s well out of his league.And these are precisely the kinds of characters that Harbour loves to play. As he explained in an interview on Thursday: “Winners are great, and we like them, rah-rah. But to me, the beauty of human beings is in the flesh and the failures. We’re all frail.”Having performed over the years in Broadway productions of “Glengarry Glen Ross” and “The Coast of Utopia” as well as in films like “Brokeback Mountain” and “Revolutionary Road,” Harbour called his current renaissance “another step in a very even-keeled, slow trajectory, which I like.”Now 46 years old and married to the pop singer Lily Allen, Harbour said he was happier to have found success at this stage of his life. If he’d had this much attention as a younger man, Harbour said: “Oh God, that would be miserable. It took me so long to cultivate an artistic voice. If I had people judging me so early about whether or not they liked what I did, I wouldn’t be able to survive that.”Speaking via video from New Orleans, Harbour talked further about the making of “Black Widow” and “No Sudden Move,” his offbeat influences and the comfort of working with Soderbergh during a pandemic. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.Harbour with Scarlett Johansson, left, and Florence Pugh in “Black Widow.”Jay Maidment/Marvel/DisneyIs there a story behind how you were cast in “Black Widow”?It’s oddly pedestrian. I have friends who tested for “Guardians of the Galaxy,” who talked about a top-secret lair and getting sides [dialogue pages] and then they burn them. My agent said Cate Shortland wants to meet you for a movie she’s doing. He didn’t even know what it was about. I sat down with her, and she said, “I’m doing this ‘Black Widow’ movie for Marvel with Scarlett Johansson.” And then she proceeded to pitch my character as this dude who’s big and violent with tattoos and gold teeth and also needs you to like his jokes. She pitched me these incredible contradictions, and we talked about all these family dramedies with desperate people — movies like “The Savages” and Ricky Gervais on “The Office.” And I was like, hell yes, on so many levels.Please, elaborate on the Ricky Gervais connection.It’s just that he’s so desperately insecure, and that insecurity manifests itself in boastfulness. I love people like this. He now has such deep regret and emotional guilt, but he can’t feel any of those things. So all he does is exist on his sociopathic charm and his need for validation. Someone like Hopper [in “Stranger Things”] has guilt, but it’s so internal, whereas he’s loud in every way. Smelly and sweaty and big and hairy. So cringey, as the kids say.Is it flattering to be told by a director that she sees you as this person?I have such an odd ego. I am always flattered, and then I look back years later and I go, what were you flattered by? I’m sort of an outcast myself. Growing up, I was, certainly. And I’ve always wanted to act because I wanted people to feel less alone. Even when I’d play villains, people would say, “There was a way that you humanized the experience so that we understood someone, as opposed to judging them.” So that’s what flatters me — you’re using me as an artist to understand this deeply troubled and confusing individual that a less capable person would make a mockery of. I maybe proceed to do both. But I can hopefully give you some understanding of him.Had you ever worked with Johansson, Pugh or Rachel Weisz, who play the other members of your makeshift family?I had never even met them. But then we had rehearsals for about two weeks, which is rare on a movie this size, and we really did take on those family dynamics, right from the get-go. I did feel like Rachel was the woman I was meant to be with — no offense to Lily Allen, because she is the actual person I was meant to be with — but it did feel like Melina and Red Guardian had something beautiful. Scarlett felt like the oldest child; I started to see her as rigid in a certain way, and I started to poke fun at her rigidity. And Florence really felt like the baby of the family; I just wanted to coddle her and make her laugh.Which did you film first: the prologue scenes where your character is neat and trim, or the main sequences where he has gone to seed?I had grown the beard and the hair for “Stranger Things,” and I was like, “Let’s use the weight.” So I started eating even more. I got up to 280 pounds, and I loved it. I said to the first A.D. [assistant director], “Listen, we have to shoot the flashback stuff at the end, so that by the time we shoot the flashback, I’ll lose the weight and I’ll be thin.” And he was like, “You’ll never be thin.” [Laughs.] I was like, “Yes I will, man.” And I lost like 60 pounds through the shooting. The first stuff we shot was at the prison, so that belly that’s coming at you, that’s all real belly. And then as we shot, I started to lose weight. I was just hungry a lot of the shoot.”I’m the anti-Tom Cruise” when it comes to stunts, said Harbour, with his four-month-old puppy.Akasha Rabut for The New York TimesYou’re a recently married man — how was all of this physical transformation playing at home?[Dryly] It’s a true testament to my undeniable charisma when I say that my wife met me at 280 pounds with this beard and this hair. We went on a date at the Wolseley [restaurant] in London, and she really fell for me at my worst, physically and hair-wise. So as the thing went on, I started losing the weight and working out. And she honestly has some mixed feelings about it. Which is a good place to be in a relationship. It’s really good to start the relationship from that part, as opposed to being the young, handsome buck and watching yourself degenerate over the years.Did you get to do many of your own stunts on the film?They really want you to do it. They’re very encouraging. But I’m the anti-Tom Cruise when it comes to this stuff. I do not want to fly the helicopter. I want Alexei to be a production of eight different people. I’m the face. I’m very happy to put the stunt people in. But I do my own arm-wrestling. I wouldn’t let anyone else arm-wrestle for me.Your best-known characters now are men who, underneath their exterior shabbiness, possess at least the potential to redeem themselves. How did this come to be your particular turf?That’s what I love about Alexei and what I love about Hopper. It comes from my view of Walter Matthau. In “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three,” you have this schlubby leading man and you put him against Robert Shaw, who’s like the most bad-ass Brit in the world. You think he’s never going to take this guy. But there’s something about his American heart that we want to love, and I love embodying that. Once Hopper rolled around, it was like, swing for the fences. Give him the dad bod and let him smoke cigarettes, have him be a total mess.Just a few years ago, you were playing a lot of intimidating bruisers and flat-out villains. How did you pivot from that?It was very interesting to be perceived as a villain. There were heavies, but then I was cast as true, dangerous psychopaths, too. There’s something about the mental freedom of the psychopath that I can embrace in a certain way. It really was [the casting director] Carmen Cuba on “Stranger Things” who was like, “I know this guy’s been the villain and he’s been fifth and sixth on the call sheets for a long time, but I think he’s the Harrison Ford.” No one had seen that before. I always blamed it on the jawline or the brow, whatever it was. It really takes a sophisticated eye to go, it doesn’t matter whether he has a double chin. His heart is there.Harbour as a milquetoast accountant opposite Amy Seimetz in the new Steven Soderbergh crime drama, “No Sudden Move.”Claudette Barius/Warner Bros.How did you get your part in “No Sudden Move”?It got shut down during Covid, so they refashioned it and put that movie back together. A couple people couldn’t do it so a couple replaced them, and I was one of them. Steven Soderbergh’s process is very simple: He sent me the script. Would you like to do this? Yes, very much. And then I met him on the first day.Going by only the screenplay, what was your read on the character?Matt lives in a prison of his own making. The tragedy of Matt is that he can’t be who he is, and he’s been living this lie for a long time. There is a carrot that gets dangled in front of him, and as one of the characters says in the movie, he had the brass ring and he just let it go by. That’s the true tragedy of Matt Wertz. There’s some excitement that he may actually get to live a life, finally, after so much struggle. And he disappoints us. [Laughs.]Was this the first film you made during the pandemic?That was my first pandemic shoot. “Stranger Things” had come back for Season 4 in September, and they didn’t need me until January. And I freaked out. I love my wife and kids, but I also need to go to work, because I’ll lose my mind here, trying to home-school them. This job came to me, and I took it. We were in Detroit for two and a half, three months, sequestered in a hotel. But luckily it’s Soderbergh. He did “Contagion.” So all the C.D.C. guys that he worked with on that were there on set. We were talking about the vaccines. I would go to Soderbergh and be like, “When is this going to be over?” And he would be like, “Oh, sometime early next year, there’ll be vaccines.” I was like, “Which one?” He’s like, “Pfizer’s doing very well — two shots.” It was incredible. You’re making this movie and you’re finding out what’s actually happening at the C.D.C.Harbour on being asked to play losers: “I have such an odd ego. I am always flattered, and then I look back years later and I go, what were you flattered by?”Akasha Rabut for The New York TimesWhat are you permitted to say about the new season of “Stranger Things”?Ugh. I want to tell you something. I have my prepackaged answer, which is true, that it’s a super-exciting season. It’s gone to a whole other place. It started out, in Season 1, with this small-town police chief, and now it’s become this sprawling thing with a Russian prison and a monster. The brothers [series creators Matt and Ross Duffer] are big into video games, manga and anime, and we definitely play on that this season. We talked about “The Great Escape” and “Alien 3” as influences. In terms of Hopper, you get to see a lot of back story that you haven’t seen before, it’s only been hinted at. As opposed to this dad he’s become, eating chips and salsa and yelling at his teenage daughter, you’ll unearth some more of the warrior that he had been.Having now made a mega-budget Marvel movie, was there anything you could take from that experience into “Stranger Things”?I do a lot more stunts this season than I’ve ever done. And I — if I do say so myself — did some pretty impressive things. And that truly came from being humiliated on the set of “Black Widow,” being not able to do those things. There is an ego in me that’s growing. Hopefully by the time I’m 55, I’ll be hanging out of a helicopter as well, making my own version of “Mission: Impossible.” More

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      ‘Black Widow’ Review: Spies, Lies and Family Ties

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      Scarlett Johansson plays the latest Avenger to get her own movie, but she’s overshadowed by Florence Pugh in this Cate Shortland-directed entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.If I were Natasha Romanoff, a.k.a. the Black Widow, a.k.a. the first original female Avenger and yet years overdue for her own film, I’d be hella miffed.After wearing myself out doing flips and kicks and spy work, I finally get my own movie, but the result, Marvel Studios’ “Black Widow,” opening Friday, uncomfortably mashes up a heartwarming family reunion flick with a spy thriller — and then lets its star, Scarlett Johansson, get overshadowed.“Black Widow” begins in Ohio in the ’90s: Natasha is a brave but serious young girl who already has a hardened look in her eyes. She looks after her younger sister, Yelena, and suspiciously follows the lead of her parents, Melina (Rachel Weisz) and Alexei (David Harbour), who are actually spies posing as a married couple. Natasha, who has already started training at the Red Room, a secret Soviet boot camp turning young women into deadly agents, is split from Yelena, and the girls are taught to kill.The main action of the film skips ahead to the time immediately following “Captain America: Civil War” (2016), when Natasha (now played by Johansson) is a fugitive separated from the rest of the Avengers. If jumping back a few films in the franchise sounds confusing, “Black Widow,” along with the current Disney+ series “Loki,” serves as the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s most recent attempt at retroactively building character narratives and back stories by doubling back on its own colossal, ever-expanding timeline. And so Natasha finds out that not only is the Red Room still in business and its leader, Dreykov (Ray Winstone), still alive, the other “widow” operatives are chemically manipulated so they become mindless assassins without free will. To bring down Dreykov and his Red Room, Natasha reluctantly joins forces with her fake family, including an older Yelena (Florence Pugh), who has found an antidote to the mind control.Despite the intriguing opening sequence, which involves shootings, a jet and a family escape, “Black Widow,” directed by Cate Shortland, lags, unsure of how to proceed with the story. There’s Natasha puttering around while in hiding, some muddled exposition and the introduction of a helmeted assassin who looks like a Mandalorian cosplayer.For a story about a woman named after a deadly spider, “Black Widow” is surprisingly precious with its hero. An Avenger who has been afflicted with something of a savior complex, Natasha hopes to redeem the red in her ledger with good deeds but ends up sounding like the dull Dudley Do-Right of the superhero film.In a lot of ways “Black Widow” feels different from the usual M.C.U. film. The coercion and manipulation of young women, the kidnapping and murder missions with civilian casualties — the film seems more like a Bond or Bourne movie, with a tacked-on moral about the importance of family, and it sits awkwardly with heavier themes. (In one scene, an exchange about the forced sterilization of the widows is played for comedy but just sounds absurdly dark.)Though Johansson gets some great action shots, she is outshined by the other strong actors (strong despite their inconsistent, and often odd, Russian accents). Harbour’s Alexei is an obnoxious though endearing Russian teddy bear of a retired super soldier. Weisz’s Melina is the tough but cowardly scientist who is used to being complicit in a system of which she’s also a victim. But most often Pugh steals the show. Her Yelena is steely and sarcastic yet still reeling from what she’s done while under mind control. Pugh brings cleverness and vulnerability to the character, and she and Johansson have the chemistry to pull off the comic taunting and teasing that comes with a sibling relationship.Why does Natasha always pose in the middle of fights, landing close to the ground, flipping her hair up and back? Yelena asks mockingly. And she challenges Natasha’s self-righteous idea of heroism: “I’m not the killer that little girls call their hero,” Yelena tells her. There’s a whole movie in that exchange alone.The script, by Eric Pearson, grants Yelena more personality, emotional depth and intrigue. It not only mines the more immediate trauma she has faced but also, through her, critiques the wishful optimism that Natasha holds for the Avengers, whom she considers her real family.The film also struggles to figure out its deeper politics. Natasha and Yelena’s rough beginnings as immigrant children who are pushed into the extraordinary world of superheroes and villains recall the early years of the Maximoffs, the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. There’s some statement here about young immigrants who are left behind, but the movie never figures it out. And the villain with a love for controlling little girls? Well, I’m sure I don’t need to go into the sinister implications of that.Women assassins, women mad scientists: There seems to be a thematic undercurrent of girl power and the strength of women, which is often systematically subdued or controlled by men, but it feels superficial. We aren’t introduced to the other widows, and, for a film about expert fighters, the fight choreography and cinematography don’t do our female warriors justice; the rapidly shifting camera angles obscure rather than reveal the martial arts.By the end of the story, which leads into “Avengers: Infinity War” (and a post-credits scene jumps forward to the future, in case the hops around the M.C.U. timeline haven’t been confusing enough), it seems as though “Black Widow” is self-satisfied with its protagonist. She’s got the freshly dyed-blond ’do, and her journey with her spy family inspires her to get back to her other family, the Avengers. But “Black Widow” never feels more than just a footnote in the story, a detour that holds no weight in the larger M.C.U. narrative, except to set up Yelena for a larger role in the future.With many of these new Marvel productions, however, it seems that’s the best we could hope for: stories that finally feature the underrepresented heroes we want to see, but that often still serve as placeholders, slotting in another piece of the puzzle of the larger M.C.U. as it continues to grow.I’d hoped “Black Widow” could be deadly and fierce, but it ultimately slides just under the radar.Black WidowRated PG-13 for spy vs. spy stabbings, fisticuffs and some naughty Russian words. Running time: 2 hours 13 minutes. In theaters and on Disney+. More