[Updated] Denzel movie hits budget snag…

Updated on July 1, 2009 By Ken Begg 15 Comments

Nicely timed with my previous post, today I saw a story about a proposed Denzel Washington action flick that is getting held up by budget concerns. For reasons outlined in my last post, so it should be.

The most amazing / appalling sentence is this:  “Washington is an A-lister who earns as much as $20 million per picture at a time when studios say they want to rein in star salaries.”  If Washington ever once got twenty million for a movie, that’s freaking insane.  I wouldn’t pay him half that.  Maybe five million, with a bonus if a picture draws over a certain amount at the box office.

Again, Washington’s biggest draw ever was a middling $140 million for American Gangster (and part of the credit for even that amount has to go to co-star Russell Crowe as well).  Other than that, he’s had only two movies go even over the not-that-great $100 million mark; Remember the Titans (and the sports movie draw was probably a bigger factor than Washington’s name in the cast) and, just barely squeaking in at exactly $100 million, the Pelican Brief, which a) was made in 1993, b) co-starred the then much bigger star Julia Roberts, and c) was made from a John Grisham novel.

Again, Washington is a great actor, and probably does bring a small amount of customers to theaters.  But $20 million bucks?!  For Denzel Washington?  That’s just crazy.  No wonder studios want to cut back on ‘star’ salaries.

Aside from his salary, there’s also the matter that, again as argued before, you don’t want to gamble a hundred million dollar budget on anything starring Washington.  Sure, it could pay off–American Gangster did, modestly–but history indicates it’s a long shot.  You’d honestly be better off making the same film with, say, Dane Cook or Ryan Reynolds and paying them five million than paying Washington twice, thrice or four times that amount.

UPDATE:  Hollywood is waking up, maybe.  Two more stories from this morning.

Clooney production house moves to Sony

Pitt’s Moneyball cancelled

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  • Blackadder

    Frankly, I wish studios would quit spending a hundred million on movies – period. They’re louder and longer at that price, but not notably better.

  • Tork_110

    A little TOO nicely timed if you ask me.

  • Dammit, they’re on to me!

  • Foywonder

    If Denzel Washington’s salary appalls you then just wait until you hear about Adam Sandler’s $30 million a picture take.

  • Me

    Continued from the previous thread. The problem with discounting the money a star makes oveseas is….well, you’re discounting hundreds of millions of dollars. Brad Pitt is not super huge here, but look at his overseas numbers. That is why he is still a star of big budget movies and commands big salaries. And these expensive movies are being greenlit with the overseas potential in mind.

    Also, if you say Travolta is not a star because he couldn’t get a movie greenlit without hesitation…well, I bet he could if the budget were sensible. Travolta in a 30-40 million dollar movie? It’d have to have the worst script and concept ever to not get greenlit, I’d think.

  • Well, but Sandler can be worth the money…OK, not $30 million, that’s ridiculous (unless the star gets a hunk based on success of the film, but also personally takes a hit if it tanks). But he’s worth much more money than Denzel Washington (or at least he was), just as Jim Carrey is (or at least he was).

    Washington has been in three movies that made $100 million dollars, one of them back in 1993. Sandler in that same period has been in 10 movies that made a hundred million dollars. Four of those movies have made more than Washington’s single best movie.

    Sandler’s movies also often make a fair amount overseas. Plus, comedies (like horror movies) tend to make more on home video than the sorts of dramas Washington generally stars in.

    If I were suspect of giving Sandler $30 million, it’s basically because I wouldn’t budget his films past $50-60 million. If you can pay him $30 million and still get the movie made for $60 million (and in the past, you could, with movies like Big Daddy and Waterboy and Wedding Singer…all way short of $60 million, then it would be completely worth it. You’d be foolish not to, in fact.

    The problem is that his movies generally now cost $80-95 million to make. I’m sure they’re still profitable, but sooner or later he’s going to really stumble, and that’s a lot of bread to eat.

    But again, Sandler’s career has been a LOT more successful than Washington’s from a box office standpoint. Basically, the average Sandler movie probably makes $100 million at the US box office. Washington’s average is more in the $60-70 million range.

    And Washington’s films cost as much or more to make, or at least they seem to be getting more expensive. I’d feel comfortable budgeting Washington’s average film at $30-$40 million, as opposed to budgeting Sandler’s at $60 million.

  • Me — That’s what I’ve been saying all along–keep these guys budgeted in the $50-60 million range, and that’s entirely sensible. But film budgets are generally twice or even three times that now. Very few actors consistently ‘carry’ movies at that level anymore. Certainly the thought that nearly ANYBODY other than Will Smith (especially the likes of Denzel Washington) is making $20 a picture is ludicrous. Stars have to realize that in the present climate, they are “only” worth five or MAYBE ten million. That fact seems to be going down hard, though.

  • Aussiesmurf

    ‘Stars’ are not under an obligations to realise anything. Given that, for many, their time in the spotlight is comparatively brief, I would argue that their obligation is to maximise their possible income for themselves and their families.

    I think that studios are making these mistakes, in a weird way, because they are risk averse. If an exec greenlights a movie for $80m will Sandler and Washington, the blame can be deflected if it tanks because, hey, it had Sandler and Washington in it! Not my fault! Its a preferable strategy (for our hypothetical exec) then greenlighting a movie because it has a wonderful script. That ‘mistake’ (if a bomb) is going to be sheeted straight back to the executive’s door…

  • That’s the problem, really – there’s an attitude that “nobody ever got fired for making the safe decision.” Budget $200 million on a film starring Denzel Washington, Adam Sandler, and Christian Bale? Sure, it might only bring in $20 million, but you’re not going to be fired for stacking the deck like that, as long as you have a template script and all the other ‘right’ moves.

    Budget $20 million on a film with no-name stars, an original script, and make thought-provoking movie that you release in, say, August? You’re gonna have to *bring in* $200 million to be thought of as a visionary instead of as a rogue hack who got lucky.

    Which one sells better on the cocktail party circuit? Saying you’ve got a film in the works with Washington, Sandler, and Bale.

  • Aussiesmurf and Jason are dead on all around there. Still, I wonder if this same old same old can continue working in an age when the very studio system itself seems endangered. And apparently it can’t, or at the very least cracks are starting to show, as illustrated by the examples above.

    Look, these people are still going to make gigantic money. Is it really a tragedy if Denzel Washington makes five million a picture instead of $20 million, or Sandler $15 instead of $30 million? Pay them less and give them riders for increased payment if that exact film hits hugely.

    We all love movies here. We just need a sustainable system to provide them for the decades ahead. It will be interesting to see what form that system takes as it manifests itself.

  • R. Dittmar

    I hope you’ll allow me to take a somewhat pointy-headed tangent here, but I think that it helps explain some of the stranger aspects of the moviemaking business that we discuss here.

    I’m in the risk business myself, so I’ve always been intrigued by the some evidence that the economic eggheads have come up with that would essentially argue that the movie business doesn’t benefit from diversification. If you look at a business like credit card lending for example, you see the banks lend small amounts of money to large numbers of people expecting some fraction of them to turn out deadbeats and some much larger fraction to pay their bills. No bank would put all their eggs in one basket and extend one joker somewhere in the country a million dollar credit line or they’d be wiped out if that joker fell within the deadbeat group.

    So why don’t the studios green-light a large number of small budgeted pictures in the hopes that most of them will turn at least a modest profit? The evidence seems to show that if a studio does this then there is a strong likelihood that nearly all of these small movies will totally bomb so that you’re not any better off than had you just gone ahead and green-lit a huge $200 million blockbuster extravaganza instead and seen it fail. Another aspect of this oddity is the fact that studios earn their profitability on the big plays. The odds say that a plurality of movies are likely to bomb hard each year, some will sort-of break even but a couple will be huge hits. The huge hits are ultimately what make a studio profitable in any given year.

    I think some of the reasons that “movie star” salaries are so high are due to this freaky “all-or-nothing” nature of the movie business. If you’ve decided to go with the big budget movie, then you need to turn a massive profit for it to add to the bottom line. If you break even or lose a little, then you’re counting on some other movie to put you into the black in that year. So why not give the star $10, $20, $30 or $40 million if they’ve at least been shown to appeal at some time in the past? The marginal addition to your budget is small given that the movie has to be huge to have made it at all worthwhile. I mean if you’re making a $200 million dollar movie and it has to earn $500 million or something for the studio to turn a profit, is it really worthwhile haggling with Denzell to drop his salary demand by $5 million or get some unknown who will work for peanuts?

  • R.D. I’d say it would make sense to get Washington to drop his salary (certainly from the ludicrous heights of $20 million), exactly because he’s never been associated with any movie that falls into the area you’re speaking of.

    Morever, blockbusters are generally (and have been for a while) the movies that LEAST need stars in them. Getting somewhat name actors (Johnny Depp, Robert Downey Jr.) isn’t a bad idea, but there’s no reason to pay them huge money, unless the first movie hits–like Depp’s Pirate movie–and you need him back for the sequels. However, for a while the actor whose combined grosses was the highest in film history was…Jeff Goldblum, almost entirely on the strength of the Jurassic Park films and Independence Day.

    Look at Star Wars; there wasn’t an expensive actor in the batch. Admittedly, the film made Harrison Ford a star (well, that plus Raiders) of a sort we don’t really see anymore, but really, there was no reason going in on that movie to pay anyone a big salary or to attempt to anchor it with a big star. Few of the giant hits of the last several years have bothered with stars; Transformers I & II, Iron Man, Dark Knight, etc.

    Also, that blockbuster mentality will eventually kill Hollywood, especially now that their dead periods aren’t being covered by gigantic DVD revenues. But in any case, again, the bigger the movie, the less it needs a star.

  • R. Dittmar

    Ken,

    Don’t think I’m playing too much the devil’s advocate here, because I can’t really disagree too much with anything you’ve said. I’m just pointing out the truly freakish aspect of the movie and entertainment in general businesses that makes it very hard to gainsay their decisions. There’s just no other business model like it.

    Imagine if you will that the way Starbucks operated was to make a big pot of coffee every morning, sell cups at whatever price people who came in the store were willing to pay (losing money on nearly every sale) and eventually make a profit because once or twice a week somebody came in to spend $100,000 on a cup of coffee. How would you figure out how much to pay the people who worked there in any rational way? Maybe there’s one person who’s always lucky to be at the counter to sell Daddy Warbucks his java. That person is Will Smith. Maybe there’s another person that is always at work at the store when Daddy Warbucks comes in, but is serving other customers when the Golden Cup of Joe is sold. That person is Denzell Washington. There’s another person at work who is only around for days in which massive amounts of coffee are sold at a huge loss for the day. That person is Eddie Murphy. And note that it’s still worth paying that hapless schmoe just to keep the store open for the big payday.

    And for that matter on the blockbuster front, how could you even figure out how much coffee to make? You make all your profit on the sale of one or two cups of coffee a week. Nearly all the rest sold would be at a huge loss. Do you make a bunch of tiny pots each day and close early when they run dry? Do you make one or two hugh pots once or twice a week in hopes of being open when Rockefellar shows up? The whole industry is just so bizarre, it’s hard to make justify anything they do on rational grounds.

  • KeithB

    Is it the studios thinkning this or the trade papers? Maybe they can sell more LA Times and Hollywood Reporters with stories about the “big stars.” The only time people want to read about character actors is when they die. (cf Karl Malden)

  • Aussiesmurf

    Another part of the issue is the huge lead-in time that movies have. When a star is ‘hot’, he may sign four contracts for movies that won’t come out for three years. By then, people are saying : They paid him THAT MUCH?? WHY?

    And for those recommending a ‘lower-risk’ ‘lower-budget’ model, I can’t recommend enough a book called ‘Down and Dirty Pictures’ by Peter Biskind, basically about Miramax and similiar studios in the 90s, that made the Weinsteins extremely rich off movies like The Crying Game, Pulp Fiction and so on.