@Verne: your comment is a much fairer assessment of the situation than mine, so thank you for the steadier head. I'm not a Scarlett Johansson fan, if that wasn't obvious ;)
In the end, you can't polish a turd. Both the Black Widow character and movie, are turds compared to the rest of the franchise. "Sisters doing it for themselves" just wasn't a compelling concept to sell to the largely male MCU audience. I'm no marketing genius, but that much seems plainly obvious. Scarlett didn't make the movie any more attractive to drop dough on than a no-name actress like Florence Pugh who was likely paid penny to the pound.
Shang-Chi, starring a relatively unknown actor, had an opening weekend that demonstrates the appetite for entertaining Marvel flicks is still there, despite the more relaxed attitude towards the pandemic. It just wasn't there for Black Widow, either in cinemas or online. Disney gambled that peeps would be more inclined to watch at home in 2020 on the back of the megahit Mandalorian series and it didn't pay off due to lack of interest.
It's pretty ballsy asking for another 400% of an already monumental salary, either due to circumstances beyond the studio's control, or lack of interest from the public. The dual-launch likely didn't harm the box office bottom-line to the perceived extent. There's no way Black Widow was touching anywhere near $1B for an origin story of a middling character.
Disney knew they had a turd on their hands due to the timing of the release and the comparatively poor product compared to the rest of the MCU, so f*ck it...dump it online and see how it goes. I get the denied opportunity cost, but Disney couldn't hold the film back until COVID passed to buff the ticket-lines. Most of us didn't care about Black Widow at release. Why would we care about her in two or three years?
Unless there was a contract explicitly preventing that outcome, Scarlett may have to bend over and take it. Disney isn't run by dummies, they knew the risk of the release strategy. Scarlett's time with Disney was done regardless, so it sounds like an opportunistic cash-grab rather than a good faith negotiation.
I appreciate the outcome isn't ideal for either party, but more money than you or I will see in our lifetimes for at best a year's work seems more than fair compensation for the end-product, and she does receive residuals for the rest of her natural life.
And here we have the world's best example of "you think you're hot sh!t, but you're only cold fart warmed up".
Scarlett is kidding herself is she truly believes her performance in the woeful Black Widow movie is worth $100M USD. All I see here is a complete and total lack of talent in Hollywood if this is the best the industry can produce.
Black Widow tanked (relatively-speaking) because you and your character aren't interesting Scarlett, not because Disney ripped you off. They should have (and likely did) set a performance benchmark for ticket sales before remotely offering profit-based residuals. If the tickets don't sell in a vanity piece, that's on you.
Black Widow's about as interesting a superhero (sans any modicum of superhero ability) as the arrow guy and flying guy in Avengers, whose names are so forgettable I can't recall them at all. I wouldn't pay a red cent to watch a movie starring them either, which is the real problem here.
You can't all be Captain America, Thor or Ironman. Some of the Marvel characters are little more than background filler, cannon fodder, romantic interest (gag) or comic relief. Black Widow falls well and truly into that "meh" category.
$100M for Black Widow is beyond laughable. Bridge burnt, move along Scarlett, no-one but your greed-fuelled entourage cares.
@angel9ramos7: Logic fail. That'd make you North American, or more simply American. Isn't that what citizens of the United States of America call themselves these days?
I think the logical conclusion you're attempting to draw is calling a Scottish person English. That's a completely different and false statement because they're not from England and it's not what I said. But they are from Britain, ergo, they're British...FACT.
Yes, Scotland is a country, but it's also politically part of the nation of Great Britain, and physically part of the island of Britain, the continent of Europe and the planet Earth.
Scots are Scots, but they're also Brits, Europeans and people of Earth. All statements are valid and indisputable. Great logic.
Before you keep arguing against something you clearly know nothing about, you might want to...how did you put it? Look it up.
@angel9ramos7: Doesn't change the FACT that a) Scotland is physically part of the island of Britain and b) they're British. Might want to look at a map and the Union Jack flag. Having national pride has nothing do with either FACT.
@Maxx_the_Slash: Given Scotland is part of Britain (the northern part of the island), then yeah, it makes sense :facepalm:
Thank the floaty sky deities Williams didn't get the role - he would have over-played the role and turned Hagrid into a campy twat.
Besides, Americans butcher British accents and they shouldn't even attempt an Australian one...without fail, it is always god-awful and more than a little offensive to the locals. That's why these casting policies exist - to sell a role, the punters need to believe it and yanks just can't pull the accents off.
Ironically, everyone else is good at a 'murican accent and it's often difficult to tell the country of origin until the actor speaks in their native accent.
No-one else thought this was going to be Spore in Space?
There's only so many purple gorilla-donkeys you can see before teaspoon-deep, procedurally-generated gameplay gets the better of you.
I'm surprised HG added combat, survival and crafting mechanics into the exploration mix to give the game some legs. But I'm not surprised they failed to pull any of it off.
By the way, HG fix the ridiculously slow turn-speed on PS4 - it makes an uninteresting game unplayable.
"more badass then ever before" "then ever before" "then"
Seriously, this is what journalism has become? Basic grammar people! Do yourself a favour Mary and read this - http://theoatmeal.com/comics/misspelling
@Salt_AU Ditto. I generally wait until games hit $20-$25 and buy from UK sites like zavvi.com, game.co.uk and ozgameshop.com. It costs at most a couple of bucks to send the entire order, which blows the "shipping and distribution" defense for higher prices out of the water.
Local retailers need to realise online stores are the competition, not the shop just up the road. Retail price competitiveness is essential to stop the flow of Aussie gaming dollars out of the country. Nothing else will prevent me from buying overseas.
The only advantage local retail offers is immediacy. However, if like me, you're prepared to wait a couple of weeks for shipping, that advantage is lost. All it boils down to is dollars and cents and I'm not paying almost double to keep a local shop's doors open.
As a consumer, I'm not here to prop up unsustainable business models. Why should I pay $100 a game when the same game can be bought online and imported to Australia for at most $60, including shipping?
Game retailers and publishers (and the retail sector in general) in the Australian market are price-gouging the customer...plain and simple. Blaming currency rates, marketing, distribution, staffing, storefront etc costs and supporting local developers (who predominately work in iOS development and make a killing at it) means nothing to me when I can pay significantly less to import a game from overseas. Those expenses are the retailers cost of doing business, not mine. As a consumer I'm only prepared to pay what the item is worth in equivalent EU and US markets, nothing more.
Those who buy packaged goods have already embraced online distribution on a global scale. It's up to the local video game industry to meet the explosive demand for cheaper online goods or perish.
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