Johansson vs. Disney

Scarlett Johansson and Florence Pugh, in 'Black Widow'. Disney / The Hollywood Archive / Avalon / Disney / The Hollywood Archive /

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• Scarlett Johansson's crusade against Disney to change the rules of the game in Hollywood

Scarlett Johansson, the star of

Marvel's latest movie

, filed a lawsuit last week against the production company's parent company, The Walt Disney Company, for breach of contract.

The actress alleges that Disney's decision to release the film last July both in theaters and on its

service

, Disney +, skips the terms signed four years ago, when it committed to the project, and has caused serious financial damage. Johansson had negotiated a significant bonus referenced to box office sales, which are obviously diminished when the film is available for $ 30 on Disney's new service. The entertainment giant has responded by accusing Johansson of being insensitive to the situation created by the covid, and has even made public the money it has collected so far, 20 million dollars (the specialized press affirms that Johansson may be losing about 50 million dollars of your box office percentage).

Contractual conflicts between creators and studios are not uncommon. Hollywood is a highly judicialized industry and practically a legal specialty unto itself. This case is striking because of how public the confrontation is and because of the aggressive language between two partners who have collaborated on nine superhero films that have generated billions of dollars. It is not just money. The demand is a turning point in the fight for the distribution of negotiating power in the industry after its transformation to digital platforms. Movie tickets are turning into clicks, just like physical discs. And the money is no longer distributed the same.

The pandemic has had dramatic consequences in the industry, with theaters empty for months and multi-million dollar projects crammed into a drawer. But the need to release titles has also served as an excuse for large studios to experiment with a future in which they can break the exhibition rules to compete in the digital market, direct to the consumer and without intermediary industries. Warner opened the floodgates in December by announcing that its entire 2021 catalog would debut on its HBO Max service. Now, it is a race. For Disney, the success of Disney + is an existential necessity in the new world created by Netflix in the blink of an eye, and that also explains why it wants to empower it with titles like

. Johansson's lawsuit against Disney is the first open-field confrontation to maintain the bargaining power of the actors in the face of the future oligopoly of digital services.