Marvel He made it clear during his early years that his pulse did not tremble when it came to firing actors and signing others to give life to his characters, but things got especially complicated when it came time to make ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’. So much so that Robert Downey Jr. he had to punch the table to prevent it from Chris Hemsworth and Scarlett Johansson they were fired.
money is always money
The reason for the conflict was that Marvel did not specially pay its stars during their early work for the studio. For example, a person with access to privileged information revealed to Deadline that some of the protagonists received only $ 200,000 for their participation in ‘The Avengers’, while Downey Jr. took a whopping 50 million for that movie.
The precedents did not seem good for Downey Jr. to fight for his teammates either, because Terence Howard he had accused him years before of taking the money that was going to be for him in ‘Iron Man 2’ and then throwing him out – his role went on to be played by Don Cheadle since then-. However, things were different this time.
Hemsworth and Johansson were the ones who were most bellicose with Marvel’s threat to fire actors who did not want to sign a new contract with the conditions stipulated by the studio. For example, Hemsworth’s team argued that the actor had already been paid $5 million for “Snow White and the Huntsman” and that he had no problem continuing to work with Universal if Marvel refused to budge. For his part, Johansson made it clear that he was not going to accept a lower salary and that he was leaving beforehand.
Finally, it was possible to reach a more beneficial agreement for the actors, and the main person responsible for this was Downey Jr., who adopted a position of big brother with respect to his co-stars. In this regard, another person with access to privileged information commented the following to Deadline:
He is the only one who has real power in this situation. And also eggs of steel. He’s already sent the message that he’s not going to work at a place where they treat his coworkers like crap.
Finally the blood did not reach the river and all the actors continued aboard Marvel. In fact, when there was an economic dispute again, it was already with Disney, as Johansson did not hesitate to sue the studio for breach of contract for the launch strategy of ‘Black Widow’. The bitter confrontation was resolved with an out-of-court agreement, but the actress commented shortly after that it was important that someone like her led the way to avoid this type of abuse. Just the same thing Downey Jr. had done years before.
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