Hollywood Studios Want Talent to Share the Risk

How could Bruce Almighty, with a take of $242,829,261, be reasonably called "basically a flop"?

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How exactly was *Bruce Almighty* a flop in any sense? It is getting a sequel, after all.

Or are we using the Hollywood Accounting Method to determine the flick was a financial flop?

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Ummm...when did $484 million (Bruce Almighty) become a flop. Daddy Day Care made $264 million woldwide...$100 million in the states and Disney more than doubled the return on The Haunted Mansion globally. Studios will find a way to make their money (double dipping dvds, selling preimium cable vs basic cable vs broadcast rights, cross promotional ads, product placement...)

The actors should get as much as they can from the studios. If a movie cost $20 million less without a big name actor do you really think the studios are going to pass the savings on to us?

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Sounds good, but where does it end? Should every cast and crew member be paid for how well their film does? And what if the star feels that the marketing or even the final cut of the movie is the reason for the lack of return?

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Re: that Crowe quote. Also it's been said that the budget for that Baz epic is $100mAUD ($130mUS). I believe the last we heard was that Fox wanted Crowe to do it for no salary and only take points on the profit. That's ridiculous. I can understand the studios wanting to reduce the salaries of the highest paid actors, especially when combined with back-end points, but it's not just the star's salaries that are ridiculous, it's some of the projects themselves. I am glad to see the studios putting a stop to some asinine projects before they get made; for example, the recent stopping of production of the 'Nerds' film. I also wish they'd stop putting all their $$$ into CGI/comics/superheroes and concentrate more on coming up with original scripts. Scripts that tell a story with interesting characters.

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You think actors don't bear risk?

The "top talent" has earned those high paychecks by consistently delivering over time. As soon as it doesn't pay for the studios, these actors won't be able to find work (at high rates). Also, these actors (female ones in particular) have a limited time frame to capitalize on their talent.

Don't cry for the studios. They just want a bigger piece of the pie, and they can't stand that they have to pay so much for someone who is most likely to draw in the audience.

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If you look down any actors history concerning the films they've made, you'll see that there is a lot of losers with some winners thrown in the mix.

The myth that it is an actor's celebrity that makes the film work, or people want to see it, needs to be thrown in the trash can of history. If the story isn't compelling, it doesn't matter who's in the film, people will refuse to watch it.

That's the reason so many films without known actors have done so well.

It doesn't matter whether anybody likes it or not anyhow, the economics of Hollywood are finally catching up with reality, and the days of the big paycheck, whether the film performs or not are over.

While there will be the occasional big-budget film, there number are going to be few and far between. The day of the $20- to $30 million average priced film are now upon us. Actors can figure out from there what their take will be.

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eternal sunshine wasn't a flop cause the budget was pretty low anyway. it didnt have a wide release and had a great theatre average compared to the other movies released at that time. it wasnt meant to be a blockbuster and it did make a good profit. "Fun with dick and jane" had a lot of competition and still managed to rake in the money by staying in the top ten for quite a while and not dropping so drastically.true it wasnt a blockbuster but it did make a small profit.

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Please do your research - Bruce Almighty as other readers noted was a tremendous success. Fun with Dick and Jane made over 100 million. It's bad enough when people declare 50 million movies as flops but 242 million is a new one.

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Thanks for the comments everyone. What I'm really talking about here is perception and expectations in Hollywood, not dollars. If the studios think Jim Carrey isn't worth the money because his last few movies didn't perform up to expectations (no matter if those expectations are "realistic" or not), then he isn't -- at least to the studios. No matter what actual dollar amount the films made or didn't make.

Sure, the studios have their own accounting system that few can understand but the reality is they are losing money and see stars salaries as a place to save on the bottom line. They have to start somewhere and those numbers stand out because they're so large.

I'm not a studio lover. They do many things wrong and probably deserve much of the blame for the current state of the film industry. That said, I also think "top talent" could think a little more about the bottom line and a little less about the size of their wallets. If its really about "doing good work" then they should be more concerned about good scripts, directors and films and less about the money.



The truth is that this is a problem that will probably never be solved, especially given the attitudes on both sides. I may not like the studios very much and blame them for many of the problems in Hollywood -- and I'm a fan of Jim Carrey and Russell Crowe -- but no matter what, I don't think anyone is worth a $20 or $25 Million dollar paycheck for any job, even acting.

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Bruce Almighty was one of the biggest hits of that year, and the biggest comedy. It met and exceeded expectations. It was a bad choice, as it was his only real hit of late.

Pretty much any other movie he was in, comedy or otherwise, could have been substituted. We all know that he's having trouble with work due to not enough films performing as Bruce Almighty did.

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Love your site and agree with the point you're making here, but to say Jim Carrey's last few films were flops makes you look like an idiot. "Bruce Almighty" grossed over $460 million worldwide and "Dick and Jane" earned over $200 mil. If you're going to make statements to support your position, there are plenty of flop worthy examples you could have used if you had bothered to even do a little research.

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Again, and for the last time, I'm not talking about money. I'm talking about expectations and perception. That's all. I don't care if "Bruce Almighty" made $500 million dollars, the perception at the studio level (at least from the people I know and talk with about stuff like this) was that it cost too much and didn't end up making the studio enough money. Same for "Fun with Dick and Jane" -- and many more examples.

And Jon, thanks for starting off with a compliment before calling me an idiot. It's the little things like that that I really appreciate.

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Bruce almighty cost acording to BOM 80-100 million dollars, and grossed just under 500million. it is one of the biggest comedys of all time, and is the reason that Evan Almightys budget is going to end in about 200million, and the studio is using bruces numbers as a bench mark, I am getting sicj and tierd that the some movies are considerd flops when they clearly are not.

hter are still people that say that Hook is a flop costing a then stagerig 70 million and grossing 350 worldwide, But then again studios tried to say that Coming to america never made any mony, so who knows what goes on inside there heads.

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Chris,

Long-time reader, first-time poster. Let me start off with a compliment as well: This site is one of the finest movie sites on the internet and the writing and content is almost always top notch. I also agree with the point you are trying to make here.

That said, I'm going to throw in my hat with those that say that your assessment of "Bruce Almighty" is wrong on every level, financial or not. There seem to be two arguments here:

1) Bruce Almighty did not make that much money (I don't think you're making this argument)
2) Regardless of how much money "Bruce Almighty" made, it didn't justify its production budget.

I can understand how both arguments might be true in some cases, but in this case I think it's not. Using dollar figures from Boxofficemojo (admittedly not super-accurate, but good enough for our purposes), we see that Bruce Almighty cost $81 million, and grossed $484 million worldwide ($242 million of which was domestic), not taking into account DVD sales. Casting aside the issue of the film's quality (which I think we can all agree, it wasn't that great), this movie was a hit no matter how you look at it: it raked in several times over its production budget and the sequel with Steve Carrell is already in production. Compare this with "Superman Returns" which has made LESS money world-wide and cost MORE THAN THREE TIMES AS MUCH MONEY to produce. From that perspective, "Bruce Almighty" was an enormous success (but I don't expect you to take the perspective). That being said, a movie like "Fun with Dick and Jane" was clearly a flop. Its domestic total barely equalled its whopping $100 million production budget. So, I definitely agree with you that "Fun with Dick and Jane" did nothing for Carrey's career. However, even "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," while not a hit, performed well financially.

Anyway, all I'm saying is, don't take a crap on all of Carrey's last few movies, ESPECIALLY if it's not justified.

I once read that Hollywood is an industry where, if you prove you can make money just one time, you can expect to be gainfully employed for years to come. There are way too many examples of this. Think of the last good film that Joel Schumacher made, or even better, Wolfgang Peterson (I think that would be Das Boot). Studios are still handing over wads of cash to these directors to make what they hope will be mega-blockbusters, and then even after they fail spectacularly, they give them money again! (Did anybody even like "Troy" or "Poseidon"?). Unfortunately, I have to say that one of my all-time favorite directors, John Woo, has also evinced this treatment: The spectacular box office performance of Mission Impossible 2 and Face/Off immunized him from the subsequent failures of Windtalkers and Paycheck.

In any case, we can all be glad that hopefully, things will be changing soon, at least with regards to the actors.

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The studios system is in dire need of a revamp, but not by dragging talent into the risk sharing. Studios only really look at the bottom line which means that by the time a film reaches theaters any creativity and originality it may have had has been sucked dry. That's assuming it wasn't a sequel or remake/rehash/reinterpretation of something better that is solely designed to make the studios more money. Good for you Russell Crowe!

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The best actors never want to do badly or sink a picture. Their careers are on the line and their pride doesn't let them do less than their best. It's not their performances that may sink a film, it's studio interference, bad editing, poorly aimed promotion and the vagaries of the market.

Actors are being made a scapegoat for factors beyond their control, yet it's their performance and face the public sees. What they don't see are all the people claiming producer credits and a huge cut of the financial pie. The public doesn't see all the self important interference. They don't see the mistakes in the editing suite after the film is made, and far too often they do see ill advised promotions and poorly targeted PR.

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Mr. Ullrich: regarding the comment attributed to Russell Crowe that "I do charity work but not for major studios." I would like to point out that he made this comment about Luhrman's upcoming film which he signed on to do and agreed to a cut in pay because it was an Australian film. It was only after it appeared that they wanted a further reduction that the comment was made. As usual Mr. Crowe is being maligned by taking a comment out of context.

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