Scarlett Johansson Earned $4,131 a Week for Her Latest Movie
Scarlett Johansson might be one of the highest-paid actors in the world, but she didn’t take home a huge payday for her role in Asteroid City. The Oscar-nominated star earned just a few thousand dollars per week for playing Midge Campbell in Wes Anderson’s latest movie.
Scarlett Johansson agreed to a smaller payday for the new movie ‘Asteroid City’
Johansson is used to taking home multi-million-dollar paychecks for her work in blockbusters such as Black Widow and Avengers: Endgame. But for Asteroid City, she settled for a much smaller salary. She earned $4,131 a week for her part in the movie, which took eight weeks to film, according to a recent report in Variety. That means she banked a little over $33,000 for playing Midge, a famous Hollywood star.
Johansson’s relatively meager salary (by Hollywood standards, at least) isn’t an anomaly when it comes to Anderson’s films. Edward Norton said he made SAG weekly minimums for his work on 2012’s Moonrise Kingdom.
“I lost money for sure,” Norton said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly (via YouTube), where he also revealed that he shared a house with the director and several of his co-stars to save money. “On every Wes Anderson movie I’ve ever done is a money-losing proposition, there’s no question. But it’s worth it. It’s like being in the best theater company ever.”
The Marvel star sued Disney over her ‘Black Widow’ payday
Johansson was apparently happy with a smaller paycheck in exchange for the chance to work with Anderson and the rest of Asteroid City’s large ensemble cast. (The movie also stars Norton, Tom Hanks, Tilda Swinton, Jeffrey Wright, and Maya Hawke, among others.) But she didn’t hesitate to go toe-to-toe with one of the biggest media companies in the world when it tried to shortchange her for her work on a different movie.
In 2021, Disney decided to simultaneously release Black Widow in theaters and on its streaming service Disney+. Johansson – who was paid $20 million for playing Natasha Romanoff in the movie – filed a lawsuit claiming that Disney’s move was a breach of her contract, which guaranteed that the movie would receive an exclusively theatrical release. Because the movie was also available on streaming, Johansson argued that she lost out on substantial backend compensation she would have otherwise received.
The actor and the studio eventually settled out of court, with Johansson reportedly receiving a $40 million payout. But it wasn’t all about the money, she said. She also felt she had to use her voice to stand up for other creatives in the entertainment industry who were losing out because of the shift to streaming.
“I couldn’t even walk through a restaurant without somebody saying, ‘Good for you. Stand up for yourself,’” she told Variety. “I could see that it had a bigger impact. I got support from strangers that have no skin in the game at all.”
Scarlett Johansson’s net worth
Playing hardball with Disney only added to Johansson’s already substantial net worth. The actor is worth an estimated $165 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth. That’s not just due to Black Widow but also her earnings from other Marvel movies. She earned $56 million in 2019 alone, according to Forbes. But she says she’s had to fight to get paid fairly.
“Just because I’m the top-grossing actress of all time does not mean I’m the highest paid,” she told Marie Claire in 2017. “I’ve had to fight for everything that I have.”
Source: Celebrity Net Worth.
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