Credit: Marvel StudiosScarlett Johansson has ditched the Marvel Cinematic Universe for another huge franchise, and she’s making her thoughts on her Disney experience known.
From 2010’s Iron Man 2 until 2021, Scarlett Johansson portrayed Natasha Romanoff, AKA Black Widow, in the MCU, becoming one of the longest-tenured actors in the entire franchise. As one of the original Avengers, alongside Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Jeremy Renner, and Mark Ruffalo, Johansson was one of the most prominent mega-stars in the world’s most commercially successful movie series ever.
Despite that, it took until 2021 for her to get a solo film in Black Widow, in which she starred alongside Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Ray Winstone, and Rachel Weisz.
The film was one of the first MCU movies released after Avengers: Endgame (2019), the massively successful culmination of the Infinity Saga, and followed Scarlett Johansson’s character’s adventures between Captain America: Civil War (2016) and Avengers: Infinity War (2018).
As the first film after the twin billion-dollar successes of Endgame and Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019), there were a lot of expectations on Black Widow.
Unfortunately, the Scarlett Johansson film was released in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which threw the theater industry into chaos and upended all traditional release strategies. Disney decided to simultaneously release the film on the Disney+ streaming service and in theaters, likely sabotaging whatever grosses it might have drawn in.
Scarlett Johansson filed a lawsuit against The Walt Disney Company, claiming that Disney had violated a contractual clause requiring the film to be released exclusively in theaters and that the actress had been refused “very large box office bonuses” because of it. Things got ugly fast.
Disney claimed that Scarlett Johansson’s lawsuit had “no merit whatsoever” and that the actress was displaying a “callous disregard for the horrific and prolonged global effects of the COVID-19 pandemic,” weaponizing the deadly virus as a legal defense.
Over the course of the legal battle, the company would go on to claim that Johansson’s $20 million salary should be plenty, basically arguing that she should be satisfied with what they gave her and aggressively pushing for the case to go into confidential arbitration.
Disney’s case against Scarlett Johansson was widely condemned as a misogynistic, gender-based attack on her lawsuit and was eventually settled for a reported $40 million. The actress herself said at the time that it was “very fortunate that nobody will have to go through what I went through.”
The likelihood of Scarlett Johansson returning to work with Disney and Marvel Studios is understandably pretty slim, although she recently told the New York Times that “I don’t hold a grudge.”
On the other hand, she openly condemned Disney and Marvel Studios in their behavior toward her, continuing on to say:
“I think it was just poor judgment and poor leadership at that time. It just felt very unprofessional to me, the entire ordeal. And honestly, I was incredibly disappointed, especially because I was holding out hope until, finally, my team was like, ‘You have to act.’”
Related: ‘Jurassic World 4’: Scarlett Johansson’s Character Reportedly Revealed
The actress did not go so far as to name names when she says “leadership,” but we can list some executives from 2021: Bob Chapek, who was Disney CEO; Bob Iger, the chairman of the company at the time; and Kevin Feige, President of Marvel Studios. While those three very powerful men might not have personally authorized the salted-earth campaign against Johansson, it is highly unlikely that they would not have had to condone it on some level.
Perhaps that’s why Scarlett Johansson is no longer working with Disney. Her most recent movie, Fly Me to the Moon, was produced by Apple and distributed by Columbia and Sony Pictures, while her next franchise picture, the fourth Jurassic World movie, is a Universal Pictures production. Maybe the leadership at those companies has better “judgment.”
Do you think Scarlett Johansson will ever return to the MCU?