When Shortland was directing initial takes for “Black Widow,” Winstone was fine with his work and with the production. It wasn’t until he was called back for additional filming that the experience became miserable. When the bean-counters started to get involved, and Winstone realized he was contracted to keep on working, he found the soullessness of the enterprise to be overwhelming. If it hadn’t been for the litigiousness of the matter, he would have even quit. The actor explained:
“It was fine until you have to do the reshoots. […] Then you find out that a few producers have come down, and your performance is too much, it’s too strong … That’s the way Marvel works. It can be soul-destroying because you feel like you’re doing great work. […] I actually said, ‘You ought to recast it because that was it for me.’ And you end up doing it again because you’re contracted to do it. Otherwise, you end up in court. It’s like being kicked in the balls.”
Reshoots are common in the world of high-end Hollywood blockbusters, so “Black Widow” requiring reshoots was not in itself a sign of a troubled production. But it seems that it’s possible to take things too far; one might recall the weeks of reshoots undergone by “The Marvels,” for instance. It’s likely that Winstone’s performance was merely larger and more exciting — not worse — before reshoots, and that Cate Shortland had made the correct directorial decisions.