She may have missed out on becoming the first Marvel hero to lead her own movie, but Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff is finally set to take centre stage in a Black Widow solo film from Marvel Studios, and THR is reporting that the actress has secured a bumper payday for her efforts.
The trade claims that Johansson is set to pocket a cool $15 million fee to reprise her role – the same amount that Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth earned for appearing in Captain America: Civil War and Thor: Ragnarok respectively, as well as Avengers: Infinity War and next year’s Avengers 4.
Johansson’s deal is far and away the biggest that Marvel has paid out for a first solo outing, coming in at three times the $5 million salary Brie Larson is collecting for Captain Marvel. Chadwick Boseman reportedly earned $2 million for the lead in Black Panther, while Robert Downey Jr. earned just $500,000 for the first Iron Man (although his subsequent paydays have more than made up for that – including $50 million for The Avengers, $75 million for Iron Man 3 and $10 million for just three days work on Spider-Man: Homecoming).
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Black Widow has Cate Shortland (Lore) attached to direct, and will reportedly be a prequel taking place before Natasha’s first on-screen appearance in Iron Man 2. As yet, there’s no word on a potential release date but given how far along the production line it appears to be, we’ll presumably see it as one of the earlier Phase Four movies.
Gurpreet Bhatia says
This makes perfect sense. If one considers what Johansson’s pay cheques have been for her major film’s in recent years outside the MCU then coupled with her contributory efforts within Marvel this is not shocking. Scarlett at this stage of her career is one of Hollywood’s leading females along with Jolie, Stone, Lawrence, Roberts, Witherspoon and Aniston and can thus command such big fees like her aforementioned peers. Both Boseman and Larsson are nowhere near this stage in their careers or have a back catalogue of films to support double digit dollars but could based on continued Marvel success and a few Oscar nominations like Downey Jr.