The (real) latest victim of America’s recession: Scarlett Johansson

You know the recession’s bad when Scarlett Johansson gets offered $250,000 to do a big-budget flick like the Iron Man sequel. Johansson managed to stave off poverty a little while longer by negotiating up to somewhere over $400,000, The Daily Beast reports, but that’s still a far cry from the likes of the $20 million Julia Roberts raked in for Duplicity, and that many Hollywood A-listers (and some B-listers) were routinely getting. “That won’t happen again,” said one unnamed movie producer. Studios seem equally not keen on continuing with the “dollar-one gross”--a portion of the film’s gross receipts paid to top actors even before the studio has recovered its cost. Good thing movie stars are really in it for the art.

The Daily Beast