Marvel's BLACK WIDOW Lost $600 Million Due To Pirating

As you know, Disney not only released Marvel’s Black Widow in theaters, but they also released it on Disney+ as a Premiere Access option on the same day. This caused a major pirating issue and it’s being reported that the film was pirated by more than 20 million viewers, which translates to about $600 million worth of lost money.

That’s a lot of lost profit, and if it’s happening to films like Black Widow, it’s happening to other films that have been released directly to streaming services. The news comes from Deadline, which explains:

"Following Black Widow, it was clear that day-and-date leads to a freefall at the box office in the subsequent weekend of a Marvel Cinematic Universe title; the Scarlett Johansson movie weathered the worst second-weekend drop for a Disney-distributed Marvel movie at 68%. The crimping in windows, which of course impacted the star's bonus, led to the twice-Oscar-nominated actress suing Disney and settling for a reported $40M+"

"Adding to the further erosion of box office for any theatrical-day-and-date release on streaming is the fact that these movies are pirated promptly, with clean 4K copies in several languages spread around the world. By the end of August, sources in the know informed us that Black Widow had been pirated more than 20M times. That's close to a $600M estimated loss on Black Widow in Disney+ PVOD revenue alone."

When you take all of this into account, it seems to inform why Scarlett Johansson initially filed a lawsuit against Disney. As an executive producer, she lost out on even more financial benefits from pirating. It’s safe to say that the film would have made a lot more money at the box office had they released the film exclusively in theaters.