“The lawsuit is especially sad and distressing in its callous disregard for the horrific and prolonged global effects of the Covid-19 pandemic,” Disney replied to Scarlett Johansson’s lawsuit, which claimed that not receiving additional compensation from the Disney + release of Black Widow was a contract violation. Although it wasn’t a violation, her lawsuit led to an interesting debate: should actors receive additional compensation for the release of their movies on Disney+?
The answer is no. COVID-19 left box office revenue dropping rapidly. Black Widow, released this July, had the lowest total ticket sales for any Marvel Studios release since 2008’s The Incredible Hulk. The most logical explanation for this staggering drop in revenue is the crippling effect of the pandemic on the movie industry. Rebecca Rubin reported for Variety that as of early September 2021, “the overall domestic box office has reached $1.05 billion in ticket sales, down 42.3% from 2020 and down 81.3% from 2019.” The movie industry took a deep plummet after the pandemic hit, and it will take years to recover from it. The pandemic is still a threat, meaning that the box office revenues may fluctuate in the coming year. Once the pandemic is over, it should slowly stabilize.
As box office revenues drop, streaming services are thriving. People turned to virtual, at-home entertainment during quarantine, and streaming services like Disney+, YouTube, and Netflix grew in popularity. Brad Adgate wrote about the pandemic/entertainment correlation for Forbes, explaining that “With shut-downs occurring throughout the globe, consumers relied on digital (video-on-demand, streaming video and electronic sell through) for entertainment. The trend toward digital entertainment was accelerated in 2020 as revenue climbed to $61.8 billion, an increase of 31%.” Increased use of streaming services plus decreased viewership of movies in theatres is a very simple equation, and the best answer is to put movies on streaming services.
This increased use of digital entertainment should have no impact on actors’ pay. Actors are compensated for the filming of a movie and the release of that movie. The platforms on which the film is released, whether they are movie theatres or streaming services, are of no relevance to their paychecks. Production companies like Disney have the right to release their movie by whatever means will make it the most successful– which, currently, are digital streaming services– and actors are not deserving of additional compensation when that release happens. The controversy around Disney’s compensation of their actors is a baseless argument that ignores the current state of the movie industry.