The head of Disney has defended his company’s multi-platform release of Black Widow, after its star Scarlet Johansson began legal action for breach of contract.
Johansson has played Black Widow and her alter-ego Natasha Romanoff since her first appearance in the Marvel franchise in 2010’s Iron Man 2.
She says that the contract for her character’s stand alone film Black Widow guaranteed an exclusive cinema release, and that streaming it on Disney+ has meant she has lost millions of dollars in earnings.
Image: Disney CEO Bob Chapek has defended the company’s streaming release of Black Widow. Pic: AP
Marvel Studios is owned by Disney, with films streaming exclusively on Disney+ – but usually after a cinematic release.
Disney hit back at the actress at the time, saying she had a “callous disregard” to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Advertisement
Now, Bob Chapek, Disney’s CEO, told an earnings call with investors on Thursday night that the “unpredictable” nature of the ongoing global health crisis meant his company needed to be flexible when it came to film releases.
Black Widow was the “the top performing film at the domestic box office since the start of the pandemic” when it was released, Chapek said, adding he and Disney chairman and predecessor Bob Iger agreed with the schedule.
More on Disney
Chapek said: “Both Bob Iger and I, along with the leaders of our creative and distribution teams, determined this was the right strategy because it would enable us to reach the broadest possible audience.”
Speaking to analysts from Wall Street, he said that “distribution decisions are made on a film-by-film basis”, based on consumer behaviour and the market conditions.
Future releases will be based on what Disney believes “is in the best interest of the film and the best interest of our constituents”, he added.
Without mentioning Johansson by name, Chapek said that the payments agreed with its talent are fair.
“We’ve figured out ways to fairly compensate our talent so that no matter what the business model is that we have to go to market with, everybody feels satisfied.
“And I will say that since COVID has begun we have entered into hundreds of talent arrangements with our talent and by and large they have gone very, very smoothly.
“So we expect that that will be the case going forward.”
Elsewhere in the call, the entertainment monolith revealed it now has 116 million Disney+ subscribers, which is around double what it was 12 months ago.
By comparison, Netflix has around 205 million subscribers.
Image: The company’s theme parks have helped it swing back into profit. Pic: AP
The company also said it had fallen back into profit in the most recent financial quarter, in large part due to the reopening of all its theme parks – with the sites in US slowly moving back to full capacity.
Parks and products revenue jumped to $4.3 billion (£3.1 billion) from £1.1 billion (£797 million) at the same time last year.
Cementing its ownership of the Marvel franchise, the company opened the Avengers Campus at its Disneyland California Adventure Park earlier in the year, with work under way at the Walt Disney Studios Park in Paris for a similar attraction.
It is “pretty surreal”, Academy Award winner Reese Witherspoon admits, finding herself at the top of The New York Times bestsellers list.
When I meet the actress alongside her co-writer, best-selling author Harlan Coben, overnight the pair have learned that their thriller is now at number one.
He jokes: “I was texting her last night and saying you’ll now have to call yourself number one bestselling novelist, forget about Oscar winner!”
Image: Reese Witherspoon and Harlan Coben told Katie Spencer about their novel Gone Before Goodbye
As one of the most successful authors in the world, Coben has sold over 80 million books to date, while for Witherspoon this is new ground.
Not content with running a hugely successful production company responsible for a string of hits, as well as one of the most successful book clubs in the world, she explains she felt compelled to give writing a try.
“People want you to stay in your lane… as a creative person I think it’s impossible to just choose one kind of life.
“Creativity is infinite and who I was as a creative person when I was 20 is very different from the person I am now at 49.”
More on Reese Witherspoon
Related Topics:
Gone Before Goodbye, a thriller about a talented surgeon who finds herself caught up in a deadly conspiracy, is the result of Witherspoon daring to put her head above the parapet.
Image: Witherspoon says she felt compelled to give writing a try
Coben admits he was “a little wary” at first.
“I don’t co-write novels but when she made the pitch and started talking about it, I was like ‘dang that’s good, we can do something with that’.”
While countless celebrities work with ghostwriters, Coben says: “I said to her from day one ‘it’s only going to be you and me in here… no third person in here, I don’t do that’. So every word you [read] comes from Reese and me.”
Image: Coben has sold over 80 million books to date, while for Witherspoon this is new ground
Witherspoon explains: “He was like ‘if we’re going to do this, it’s going to have to be at a really high level because people going to expect a lot, so our bar was really high.”
“I said to her, in the beginning, novels are like a sausage,” Coben laughs. “You might like the final taste, but you don’t want to see how it was made and Reese got to see the full sausage getting made here.”
When it came to writing, Coben says they “fell into a rhythm right away”, working together in three-hour stints, “back and forth with a yellow legal pad – what about this? What about that?”
Image: Coben says they ‘fell into a rhythm right away’
Witherspoon says it “feels really deeply personal” to have their work now in print.
“Usually, as an actor, I walk into other people’s worlds and it’s already set up… but this was creating the whole world with Harlan and just from beginning to end feels very personal.”
While the story seems an obvious fit for being adapted to the screen, perhaps with a certain blonde actress in the leading role, Coben says that was never their intention.
“The biggest, biggest mistake novelists make when you write a book is to say ‘this would make a really great movie’. A book is a book, a movie is a movie, and we both focused on wanting this to be just a great reading experience.”
Given that their collaboration is already selling in big numbers, will the pair team up again to write a second?
Witherspoon says: “Let’s just see what people think of this one first.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
1:43
May: Eight found guilty over Kim Kardashian Paris heist
Associate professor of neurology Dr Laura Stein told Sky’s US partner NBC News: ” The most well-described risk factors include a predisposition [family history of aneurysm], high blood pressure, cigarette smoking and inflammation.”
She went on to explain that most fatal ruptured aneurysms are in the brain, killing about one in three patients.
“When it’s a blood vessel that’s in the head and it bleeds, there’s a much higher risk of having a very bad problem just because the brain is enclosed in a fixed space,” Dr Stein added.
Low-risk aneurysms are monitored by doctors for growth or abnormalities, and there are a series of potential treatment options for those considered dangerous.
Elsewhere in The Kardashians clip, Kim admitted that her ex-husband Kanye West will be in her life “no matter what” because of the four kids they share together.