Whoa!
If anyone was expecting Scarlett Johansson and Disney to stay civil throughout this legal battle to maintain their profitable working relationship… well, you can forget it!
We learned earlier Thursday that ScarJo was suing the Mouse House over their streaming release of Black Widow. Basically she’s saying her contract called for an exclusive theatrical release — of which she was getting a percentage.
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Due to the pandemic, Disney has been offering its movies as same-day streaming rentals on Disney+ — but apparently aren’t giving her a cut of that money? No one even knows how much that is, but we do know the box office of the latest Marvel Studios release is rather underwhelming for the MCU. So now the star is suing for breach of contract.
Well, Disney isn’t taking this lying down. They released an unusually vicious legal statement in response to the news, saying:
“There is no merit whatsoever to this filing. The lawsuit is especially sad and distressing in its callous disregard for the horrific and prolonged global effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Damn! They’re going at her hard, playing that pandemic card — they’re straight up trying to make her look like a selfish jerk!
To that end, they even bring up all the money she did make doing the movie, including a whopping base salary of $20 million:
“The release of Black Widow on Disney+ with Premier Access has significantly enhanced her ability to earn additional compensation on top of the $20M she has received to date.”
Ouch! We guess Disney thinks it’s important to win the first battle: the court of public opinion.
The company did not, however, provide any evidence that they had renegotiated ScarJo’s deal once the release had to be altered for coronavirus. Is it possible she’s right? Are they the ones who took the opportunity of this unprecedented release schedule to hide some of the profits from their star? Or is the millionaire movie star just upset about the low box office and finding someone to blame?
Either way, this surprisingly harsh response does not bode well for the Avengers star’s future with the company, which — in addition to possible future Black Widow appearances — includes a deal reported last month for her to produce and star in a new Tower of Terror movie.
What do YOU think, Perezcious paralegals? Is ScarJo being greedy? Or is Disney not playing fair??
[Image via Marvel/Nintendo/YouTube.]
The post Disney Hits Back HARD At Scarlett Johansson, Calls Lawsuit 'Sad' & 'Callous'! appeared first on Perez Hilton.