Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow is one of the founding Avengers and has been involved in the Marvel Cinematic Universe ever since Iron Man 2. It would make sense then that Johansson would earn a salary for those films equal to her other co-stars like Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth, who all debuted around the same time, proceeded by Robert Downey Jr. of course. That equal salary wasn’t always the case, but in a new interview with THR Johansson says that is not the case any longer.
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Johansson will earn more than $15 million for her upcoming Black Widow solo film, and that is comparable to Evans and Hemsworth’s earnings for Captain America and Thor.
“Money is a taboo topic of conversation,” Johansson said. “But I will say that, yes, I’m on an equal playing field with my male cohorts.”
Johansson has played the part of Natasha Romanov for seven films now in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, including Iron Man 2, Avengers, Captain America: Winter Soldier, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame and Black Widow will make that eight films.
Johansson recently topped the list of highest-paid actresses with $56 million, and her work with Marvel was a big contributor, especially Endgame. Like Robert Downey Jr., Johansson has a back end deal in place with Marvel that gets her a percentage of the film’s profits. Endgame brought in $2.8 billion at the box office, and Johansson’s chunk of that ended up being around $35 million.
She’s also getting $15 million base for Black Widow, and if she has a similar deal in place on the backend of that project, she’s probably well on her way to topping the list again in 2020.
As for Black Widow, Johansson also executive produced the film, saying it was “liberating in a way”.
“I feel like I’m in control of the destiny of this film, which gives me a lot more peace of mind,” Johansson said. “I know her better than anybody. What was her childhood like? What is her relationship to figures of authority? This character is gritty and multi-dimensional but has a lot of trauma and has led an unexamined life. In order to operate at this elite level, she has probably had to push away a lot of stuff.”
Black Widow hits the big screen on May 1st, 2020.
