The legal battle between Black Widow star Scarlett Johansson and Black Widow Giant Omnivorous Movie Producer Disney got nasty pretty much from the jump; it took very little time for Disney to begin categorizing Johansson (who sued the studio in late July) as greedy and ungrateful for accusing Disney of breaking its promises regarding the film’s simultaneous theatrical and Disney+ release, while Johansson’s lawyers were swift to accuse the studio of trying to “weaponize” her success against her.
But none of that fractious language was in evidence today, as Variety reports that the two parties have now officially Made Nice, with Johansson and Disney having apparently reached a settlement in the case. There’s no word on how much money ended up changing hands—Johansson was suing for $50 million, claiming that Disney essentially sabotaged Black Widow’s performance to shore up its streaming projects, cheating her out of millions in box office-based bonuses—but it was presumably hefty enough to make everyone involved very, very polite, pretty much all of a sudden.
Johansson:
I am happy to have resolved our differences with Disney. I’m incredibly proud of the work we’ve done together over the years and have greatly enjoyed my creative relationship with the team. I look forward to continuing our collaboration in years to come.
And here’s Disney’s Alan Bergman, sounding equally as vetted-by-PR in an effort to remove all human emotion from this once-heated conflict:
I’m very pleased that we have been able to come to a mutual agreement with Scarlett Johansson regarding Black Widow. We appreciate her contributions to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and look forward to working together on a number of upcoming projects, including Disney’s Tower of Terror.
(Obviously, Bergman gets bonus points here for also managing to work in a plug for a future project, name-checking the ride-based film Johansson agreed to star in just two weeks before Black Widow premiered, kicking off this whole very high-profile conflict.)
So, there you have it: Everything’s nice, nobody’s mad at anybody, and, of course, absolutely nothing has been formally resolved in the ongoing, still extremely explosive debate over theatrical windows and hybrid releases in the COVID era. (For what it’s worth, Disney has pulled back from the hybrid drops, spurred on by the strictly theatrical success of its latest MCU film, Shang-Chi.) Anyway, we’ll see you all back here when Denis Villeneuve resumes screaming about Dune getting compressed onto HBO Max in a couple of weeks. Huzzah!
Update, 10/1/21 at 4:59 p.m.: While the exact details of the settlement are, per usual, going undisclosed, Deadline reports this weekend that sources have informed them that Johansson’s payday is, to put it mildly, significant: Somewhere in the neighborhood of $40 million, just $10 million less than her initial damage request. It’s hard not to see that as a pretty unequivocal win for Johansson, even as all parties now strive to put a smile on this whole frequently ugly encounter.