Disney CEO Addresses Company's Future Amid Scarlett Johansson Lawsuit
Bob Chapek is speaking out.
The Disney addressed the company on Tuesday (September 22) at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference amid the lawsuit from Scarlett Johansson regarding Black Widow‘s release in theaters and on Disney+, which the actress alleged was a breach of contract.
Click inside to read more…
During the conference, he said Disney “has had a long history of having very symbiotic and cooperative deals with talent and we will continue to,” via Deadline.
“Certainly the world is changing and the talent deals going forward will have to reflect the fact that the world is changing,” he continued.
“We’re in a moment of time where films were envisioned under one understanding about what the world would be because frankly, it hadn’t changed much,” he went on to say, adding that film deals “made three or four years ago” were “cut three or four years ago.”
“Then they get launched in the middle of a global pandemic where that pandemic itself is accelerating a second dynamic, which is this changing consumer behavior. So we’re sort of putting a square peg in a round hole right now where we’ve got a deal conceived under a certain set of conditions, that actually results in a movie that is being released in a completely different set of conditions,” he continued.
“But right now we have this sort of middle position where we’re trying to do right by talent, I think the talent is trying to do right by us, and we’re just figuring out our way to bridge the gap. Ultimately we believe our talent is our most important asset, and we’ll continue to believe that, and as we always have, we’ll compensate them fairly per the terms of the contract that they agreed to us with.”
Several stars have spoken out about Scarlett Johansson‘s lawsuit as well.