Johansson alleges that her contract was breached by the decision to release Black Widow to Disney+ before giving it a proper theatrical release.

Now, Women in Film, ReFrame, and Time’s Up have come together to release a statement condemning this behavior and the company’s grievous treatment of Johansson.

Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and Reuters have all given very concise breakdowns of Johansson’s lawsuit and the strength of her case against Disney.

That said, the TL;DR is that Johansson is suing Disney for failing to meet the terms of their contract on Black Widow which, according to Variety, reportedly: .

Johansson’s contract and furthermore, the release of Black Widow on Disney+ with Premiere Access has significantly enhanced her ability to earn additional compensation on top of the $20M she has received to date.”.

Johansson of being insensitive to the global COVID pandemic, in an attempt to make her appear to be someone they and I know she isn’t.

[…] The company included her salary in their press statement in an attempt to weaponize her success as an artist and businesswoman, as if that were something she should be ashamed of.

“While we take no position on the business issues in the litigation between Scarlett Johansson and the Walt Disney Company, we stand firmly against Disney’s recent statement which attempts to characterize Johansson as insensitive or selfish for defending her contractual business rights.

The unfortunate reality is that women in every industry, and especially Black women and women of color (disproportionately so, in fact), are constantly underpaid and made to feel selfish or ungrateful for asking for their worth. .

The gender wage gap in the film industry is massive, particularly because you’re dealing with elevated salaries as it is. .

The fact that celebrities make enormous sums of money (like Johansson’s $20 million from Black Widow) is irrelevant.

Their statement, brief and heated as it was (executives can be so emotional), uses the pandemic and its more than 4.2M person global death toll as a shield while weaponizing Johansson’s success in an attempt to presumably (in this writer’s opinion) make an example of her and deter others from doing the same

“It’s no secret that Disney is releasing films like Black Widow directly onto Disney+ to increase subscribers and thereby boost the company’s stock price,” said Johansson’s attorney, John Berlinski of Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP, “and that it’s hiding behind COVID-19 as a pretext to do so.”