The Lawsuit That Could Define The Future Of The Film Industry

Luis A. Mendez

Boricua. Floridian. Theist. Writer. Critic. Oscar Predictor. Godzilla Fanboy. Member Of The Critics Association Of Central Florida And The Puerto Rico Critics Association.

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41 Responses

  1. DensityDuck says:

    There is a certain risk in filing a lawsuit against the studio when your series character is canonically dead.

    Although one of the more common criticisms of comics storytelling is how often a character’s dramatic death is reversed; it would be amusing if that were addressed because of a contract dispute rather than a genuine commitment to artistry!Report

  2. Jaybird says:

    some backlash against Disney in getting major stars to join their new projects

    This is where it might get interesting, maybe.

    Part of the problem is that they already did The Infinity Gauntlet. That was already a major reset point. Everything after feels like denouement. “But what does ‘happily ever after’ *MEAN*?” “Well, Black Widow fought the Taskmaster.”

    They’re already starting new stories with the secondary cast characters. I could see it being meaningful for Robert Downey Jr. to stand in solidarity with ScoJo, I’m not sure it would be for Sebastian Stan to do so. (Beyond the emotional support level, anyway.)

    And, let’s face it, Disney does a very good job of finding new 20-somethings for us to look at and say “holy cow, they’re beautiful!”

    Would *YOU* turn down an opportunity to be Darkstar and, effectively, replace Black Widow? Get 13 episodes on Disney+?Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Jaybird says:

      And one take I saw pointed out how Disney played the Covid Card.

      How dare Scarlet Johansson be so *SELFISH* in these unprecedented times?

      Which, you know, is an interesting play if you can play “we had a contract, we fulfilled the contract, sue your agent” instead.

      If Delta rips through the country and is even half as bad as has been hinted, the ability to say “See?”, even after the fact, will play well in the court of public opinion.Report

    • Pinky in reply to Jaybird says:

      Superhero movies have been bringing in big names for small roles, going back to Marlon Brando’s Jor-El. But for the major roles, not really. Paul Rudd and Benedict Cumberbatch might be the biggest pre-Marvel names in recent history. You’d have to go back to a washed-up Robert Downey Jr. or to Edward Norton to find something like an A-lister. Actually, Scarlett Johansson may have been the biggest name among the Avengers. It’s not 100% certain that any of the superhero actors will do well after the MCU, so they don’t have much bargaining power.

      I almost get the feeling Johansson is looking to this as her last big paycheck. She’s doing three things you’re never supposed to do: criticize the material, sue the studio, and grow older. Hollywood hates that stuff.Report

      • James K in reply to Pinky says:

        I think you’re right. Johanssen is 36, and for a woman in Hollywood that’s old enough to be approaching the end of her career. She may be trying to get all the money she can before her opportunities dry up and that would make her willing to burn bridges for more money now.Report

  3. Marchmaine says:

    I didn’t quite follow the logic in this paragraph:

    “That in itself would create a precedent that sets up the studios to see streaming as potentially a bigger platform to gross money with than the box office, and it could set up talent to really need major sway to get their films an exclusive theatrical run. It could also in a way be the death of “the movie star” as we know it, as major sought out talent could suddenly be pushed to the side by streaming giants who won’t have to pay as much now for said talent.”

    Are we assuming that ‘block-buster movies’ as streaming events will be similar to or replaced by, say, Game of Thrones type content where the ensemble cast is paid significantly less than a Scarlett Johansson? Perhaps.

    But, I thought the economics of an SJ (or any ‘Star’) is that they generate revenue by anchoring the movie… in which case, SJ signing on for a retainer of $20M plus a projected $50M +/- in bonuses is just a business math project of cost/value. I’m not seeing how streaming as a medium changes that calculus, unless we’re killing the block-buster itself.

    What I think is really going on is a vertical integration/disruption of the distribution model where the Content Providers are eating their distributors and in so doing can provide their products at a lower price for the same net return… especially if they are using (legal or not) loopholes in distributing those revenues to the talent.

    The most likely upshot is that actors like SJ will close the streaming loophole such that their projected value of $70M to the project is captured one way or another.

    I don’t see shifting the platform changing the $$, unless changing the platform also changes the paradigm… which it might.

    Will streaming services become more expensive? Yes. Will we pay for ‘premium content’ – we already do.

    Prediction: Once the theatres have been killed, theaters will re-open but only show, say, Disney+ content for a boutique viewing experience.Report

    • I would guess at two classes of theater — upscale places that deliver an entire “night out” experience (I’m thinking dinner theater, without the live performance), and downscale places for the people who can’t afford broadband or the monthly streaming membership, but can afford the one-time ticket in a bare bones theater plus concessions.Report

      • JS in reply to Michael Cain says:

        The only theater I was patronizing before COVID-19 was the one with decent food and craft beer on tap, delivered to your table as you watched.

        The ticket prices were no higher than anyone else’s, and the food and drink prices were comparable to restaurants serving that sort of food.

        I could have real dinner, real drinks, and pay only slightly more than if I’d just had soda and popcorn.Report

        • DensityDuck in reply to JS says:

          The ticket prices were the same because most of the ticket price goes back to the studio; the theater doesn’t actually make much money from showing the movie, they make it from concessions sales.Report

      • Marchmaine in reply to Michael Cain says:

        Reasonable… though I wonder if the ‘low end’ doesn’t have to provide a new ‘hook’ to go to the trouble of getting to the theater and paying for something you can watch on your phone (even the poor have phones, I’m told). On the one hand, ‘The Big Screen’ experience might be better… but I’m not sure it’s that much better any more… not with 4k screens, even if they are small. I’m imagining moving from Movies to ‘Feelies’ (h/t Brave New World) or some such other technological enhancement.

        On the boutique side, agreed… we started going to the Alamo (which is definitely middlebrow) on account of reserved seating and beer/apps. There was a place in NoVA that was touted as boutique-y… but it was merely pretentious-Middle Brow, which is worse. Other than a private screening room, I’ve yet to be somewhere that I’d consider upscale.Report

        • Jaybird in reply to Marchmaine says:

          When I was a kid, the *BIG* television was a 27″ screen. Suitable for watching football, Happy Days, and Saturday Morning Cartoons. (Also: The Atari 2600!)

          The Movie Experience? Man, that was something else entirely.

          Now? You can’t even get a 27″ television at Costco. 32″ is the smallest available and you have to actively look for it and click on “32 in & Below TVs”.

          The price of a big television allows for you to spend a *LOT*, if you want, but the 75″ and above televisions look like they’ve got two that might be within reach of a heck of a lot of entertainment budgets: a 75″ for $950 or an 82″ for $1200.

          There’s no way that a 27″ will ever give the home movie experience. 75″? That might. And you can watch football on it too. Video games, even.Report

          • Marchmaine in reply to Jaybird says:

            Sure, but that really craters the middle-market of folks who have enough to dedicate a certain amount to a viewing experience…. just enough.

            I think it still leaves the Upscale and Downscale markets available… esp once new tech is introduced.

            Contra new tech: 3D hasn’t done much, iMax seems stuck, and the Disney ‘feelies’ that they were pushing 20-30 years ago haven’t arrived. So VR? But why go to a special place for VR? Unless it’s the really really good VR?Report

            • Jaybird in reply to Marchmaine says:

              Of all of the 3D movies and shorts I’ve ever seen, I’ve seen maybe one that did a better job with the medium than the 3 Stooges did in “Pardon My Backfire”.

              It was Pixar, of all companies, with Day & Night.

              When it comes to VR, well… other than a very specific genre, I can’t think of VR having anything moviewise to offer. There was a little flick called “Hardcore Henry” that came out in 2015 that did absolutely positively freaking *EVERYTHING* it possibly could to deliver an Awesome First Person Movie Experience…

              But it kinda sucked.

              I mean… it didn’t really *WORK*. (But I see what they were going for.)

              If you want a cinematic VR experience, you want something like Skyrim. Not what the camera setups we currently offer can give.Report

    • DensityDuck in reply to Marchmaine says:

      I think the assumption is that with the longer tail of online video services you’ll no longer need to make 80% of the revenue in the first week, and so you won’t need as huge an advertising blitz to get everybody hype, and therefore you won’t need Big Famous Movie Stars on the poster to get people to want to come in and see your movie.Report

      • Marchmaine in reply to DensityDuck says:

        That would make sense if content is consumed over time; though now that I think on it, there’s no actual need for anyone to watch your movies… just subscribe to the service (as long as you’re not modeling a premium charge for movies).

        In this scenario, the goal is to be ‘perceived’ as having good content (or just enough) to warrant the $9.99 or $19.99 or whatever… whether you ever watch is not relevant anymore.

        Tangentially, Lady Marchmaine and I were discussing how we cannot find anything we’d like to watch together despite our subscriptions to Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime (not to mention Cable with HBO). There’s certainly a lot of content and to the industry’s credit they’ve captured a lot of $$ from a household that isn’t ‘mainstream’ … but honestly, we’re more lazy than anything else and not averse to cancelling subscriptions (which we do from time to time). For us, the content is neither good nor what we’re looking for… but that’s definitely a tangent.Report

        • Marchmaine in reply to Marchmaine says:

          Coda… meant to get to the main point which is that ScarJo is worth $70M because she makes the Advertising blitz work… without ScaJo, the Advertising would cost a *lot* more. She’s a risk/cost mitigation strategy.

          Which goes to the tangential point that you can pump out a lot of middling garbage without advertising, but who cares?

          To whit… the counter point is: it doesn’t matter anymore if we’re not selling tickets to Movies, but to a service.Report

  4. Michael Cain says:

    Once it became clear just how warped Hollywood accounting could be — series that ran for years, then continuously in syndication, and continued to show a net loss after decades — the talent started insisting on contracts for a flat payment plus percentages of the gross. The talent will now move on to contracts that cover all of the gross, box office or streaming.

    I have a standing bet with my son the graphic designer, made 20 years ago, that I will live long enough to see the first Academy Award for Best Synthetic Actor handed out. The physics packages are already good enough, human rendering is almost there, and the AI pattern matching software is getting more robust all the time. The creators of the synthetic actors will be on salary.Report

    • Pinky in reply to Michael Cain says:

      You’re assuming that those lifeless things can hold people’s interest once the spectacle is gone (and I mean the Oscars, not the CGI movie characters).Report

    • Dark Matter in reply to Michael Cain says:

      The talent will now move on to contracts that cover all of the gross, box office or streaming.

      Disney REALLY doesn’t want to talk about “all the gross” because “all” could easily include things like merchandizing and theme park rides and so on. I assume they’ve spent decades convincing themselves that these are “seperate” streams and it’s impossible to cross the streams.

      These are the people who make a Princess movie and then turn that into a dozen plus revenue streams, and presumably they’ve done that with the Avengers. They live to bundle up streams so it’s impossible to figure out how much of the main stream should go to a specific tallent so they can argue the correct amount is zero.Report

  5. InMD says:

    I don’t foresee quite the upending. This whole thing could have been addressed by very minor contract edits that all agents will now ensure are made.Report

  6. Saul Degraw says:

    On a purely legal grounds, ScarJo has good points and this case is a classic breach of contract and also terms about ambiguities. FWIW, when Warner Bros did this with WW1984, they threw a few extra million to Gal Gadot to keep her happy.Report

    • Pinky in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      That touches on something I said above. This looks more like Johansson burning bridges. Maybe she anticipates this as a me-too moment for equal pay. I’d guess that Disney has probably offered her four yachts as an apology.Report

      • JS in reply to Pinky says:

        She feels the other party violated it’s contract and sued, and you decide it’s something like “me-too”?

        My company sued another company last year for breach of contract. Was it a moral, “me-too” movement for my company?

        Male actors have sued over contract issues a number of times — not just actors — heck, Alan Dean Foster JUST settled with Disney over them trying to shaft him over a contract.

        Was it an authorial “me-too” movement where he symbolically burned bridges?

        or was it a contract dispute?

        What’s making THIS a “me-too” movement and not a bog-standard contract dispute?Report

        • Pinky in reply to JS says:

          Because she’s talked previously about the Hollywood “wage gap”, she’s been complaining recently about the sexiness of the role, and she probably could have handled this dispute quietly.Report

          • JS in reply to Pinky says:

            How DARE she mouth off to her betters!

            Clearly she has no complaint, she’s just milking it for the attention!

            Unlike everyone else who ever had a contractual dispute, complained about their industry, or had a dick.Report

            • InMD in reply to JS says:

              This is silly. If Disney breached they should make her whole. If they didn’t breach, but she has some kind of unjust enrichment or quantum meruit claim or whatever go for it. If she signed a bad contract that didn’t account for the combination of pandemic and evolution of technology, well that sucks but she still made enormous amounts of money.

              There are no victims here, just two sides fighting for their commercial interests.Report

  7. I sat we stand in solidarity with ScarJo and boycott all superhero movies.Report

  8. It’ll be interesting to see if Weekend Update had any jokes about this.Report