On July 9, 2021, the highly anticipated Marvel Studios film “Black Widow” was finally released in theatres. According to Disney, after the first six days of release, Black Widow had crossed the $100 million mark, dominating and setting records for box office during the COVID-19 pandemic. This glory, however, didn’t last long; on July 29, 2021, Scarlett Johansson suddenly filed a lawsuit against Disney in the Los Angeles Superior Court declaring that Disney had breached her contract. 

Let’s back up: during the pandemic, Disney had begun altering their strategies of releasing movies onto their streaming service Disney+. This was caused by the impatience and eagerness of folks at home waiting for new releases to be available for viewing on their own screens. The company  thus shortened the theatrical window of releasing films on streaming services to make films available shortly after they have been released in theatres. Disney hoped that this would serve as a new Hollywood business model, bringing them more income, but it instead caused them a great deal of disastrous media.     

These tensions have  to do with the fact that Disney released the film “Black Widow ” to Disney+ at the same time it had been released in theatres. According to Johnasson and her team of attorneys, this was a direct breach of her contract. Marvel’s deal with Scarlett Johansson was based upon a theatrical release, which Johnasson deduced to mean “exclusive to theatres.” Johansson states that Disney allegedly knew about her agreement with Marvel releasing their movie. 

The issue began to unravel even more once The Wall Street Journal revealed that Johansson had lost 50 million dollars worth of bonuses. Since Johansson’s salary would all come from the money she made from box office, her movie being released for streaming on Disney+ greatly strained the profit she could have collected. During the second week of the Black Widow release in theatres, which occurred while the film came out on Disney+, the movie had received a major fall in viewership in theatres. According to Box Office, the money coming in on the second weekend had fallen 67% compared to the first week. This is recorded to be the steepest fall in sales, for only the second week, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Disney responded to Johansson’s lawsuit stating that there was“no merit whatsoever to this filing,” also commenting on her selfishness during this time, “especially sad and distressing in its callous disregard for the horrific and prolonged global effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.”.This judgement of Johansson from Disney had caused even more unnecessary and bad press for Disney’s image. Certain feminist and womanist organizations from the film industry rose above and called Disney out on its “misogynistic comments,” wanting to gain justice for Johansson’s film. 

For weeks, Disney has attempted to keep the entire situation far away from the media in order to maintain their respectable image. One of Johansson’s attorney’s, John Berlinski states that “Disney knows that Marvel’s promises to give Black Widow a typical theatrical release ‘like its other films’ had everything to do with guaranteeing that Disney wouldn’t cannibalize box office receipts in order to boost Disney+ subscriptions. Yet that is exactly what happened–and we look forward to presenting the overwhelming evidence that proves it.” 

As this heated argument continues on, rumours fly from several of Disney’s interviews that they have supposedly cut ties with Johansson for future Marvel projects. Both sides seem to be on a permanent path of conflict, with neither side wanting to bulge from their point of view. With Black Widow being the lowest grossing movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the fault seems to lay beyond the hands of viewers interest, but closer to Disney’s failure of complying with Johansson’s contract.