Look, I'm no particular ScarJo stan or anything, and I acknowledge that this is all "millionaires getting in petty @#$%-measuring contest slap fights with other millionaires" . . . but this is pretty cut and dry: Disney/Marvel is IN THE WRONG. Period.
<P>
You see, Disney has, to date, only released the D+ income numbers for the movie for the three days of the movie's opening weekend, and NOT the numbers for subsequent past two weeks since the release. And no one actually seems to be adding ANY of the D+ income, either for that opening weekend OR the unreported revenue since then, to the box office totals. The worldwide box office total stands at $319mil, and so that's what they're basing her back-end pay off of, the exact letter of her contract. HOWEVER, if you add in that $60mil from the D+ opening weekend (JUST THREE DAYS) and PROBABLY another $100-120mil AT LEAST from the past two weeks of D+, that Disney just won't admit . . . you're ACTUALLY looking at a minimum of $500mil total revenue for the movie.
<P>
This is actually a VERY obvious ploy to make the movie look like it's financially doing WAY worse than it really is . . . which in turn is a blatant example of that time-honored Hollywood tradition of "fuzzy math" to make a movie look like a failure when it was really a hit, in order to not have to pay out to the actors' or directors' "box office net percentage" contracts. (The long-standing story/rumor is that "Star Wars," the original movie, has to date, after 45 years, STILL never turned a profit).
<P>
This is also made easier because the involvement of a streaming service run directly by the studio, where the actual individual projects' success and profitability is muddy anyway because "were subscriptions driven by THIS show or THAT show?" and ratings and subscription numbers and "no commercials but internal product placement" advertising, etc, etc. (Again, the rumor is that Netflix execs don't actually know AT ALL which shows are successful and which aren't, and so they leave it to the almighty algorithm to just tell them if they should drop a show or keep it going. And while Disney can count how many people paid extra to see "Black Widow," they may not necessarily be able to tell how many subscriptions were driven by the desire to see the movie or other MCU projects, specifically.) And when your directors or writers or actors are paid based on straight revenue numbers . . . not knowing what your income ACTUALLY is (or pretending and CLAIMING to not know) is one hell of a defense, and a great way to keep your money.
<P>
In fact, it should be noted, this is PRECISELY what was predicted - and hence, the reason for THEIR (threatened?) lawsuit - by the directors of Warner Bros. 2021 slate of movies (particularly Denis Villeneuve of "Dune") when WB said they were going to release ALL their movies streaming and in theaters simultaneously. And it was UNIVERSALLY agreed by pretty much the ENTIRE film industry that WB was pulling an @$$hole move for the studio to weasel out of paying out the terms of their contracts.
<P>
Just a side note: It's pretty telling that, when it's a woman, a whole bunch of guys come out of the woodwork shouting "she's rich and she sucks anyway, so screw her, LOL!"" when they were totally in support of creatives vs studio heads 8 months ago.
<P>
So, yeah . . . on a personal level, I could care less that ScarJo is losing out on a few mil from her contract. But on an industry level . . . this is CLEARLY a "letter of contract vs intent of pay structure vs mega-corp hoarding money" situation, and we can expect to see a LOT more of these in the future, and next time it might be a creative we care about a LOT more getting shafted for WAY more money, so maybe we shouldn't encourage it. Just saying.