The Marvel Studios front office may be notoriously loaded with cheapskates who’ve built a multibillion-dollar empire from the ground up in less than five years thanks to thrifty dealmaking, but at least one star has done enough franchise grunt work to get paid for the record-shattering blockbuster that is The Avengers. And when I say “paid,” I mean paid.
Let’s hear it for Robert Downey Jr.! Or at least for Robert Downey Jr.’s agents, according to THR:
According to multiple knowledgeable sources, Iron Man/Tony Stark is set for a highflying payday of about $50 million once box-office bonuses and backend compensation are factored in. (Two sources claim the number could go higher than $50 million once the ultimate box-office haul of Avengers is known, but another cautions that it could be years before the final number is known.) While on par with the upper echelon of franchise movie stars, that number blows away his superhero co-stars, all of whom will make a small fraction of Downey’s total, even as Avengers has a shot at topping the final Harry Potter film’s $1.32 billion global haul.
Why the difference? When Marvel’s Iron Man grossed a surprising $585 million worldwide in 2008, Downey’s reps at CAA and the Hansen Jacobson law firm renegotiated a deal to include what multiple sources say is a slice of Marvel’s revenue from future movies in which he plays Iron Man (one source puts it in the 5 percent to 7 percent range; another source disputes the percentage. Marvel and Downey’s reps declined comment).
Of course, profit participation is nothing new — Jack Nicholson probably just earned another $1,000 for Batman in the time it took to write this post — but compared to Marvel’s deals with Jeremy Renner (roughly…
That’s right, Mantivities. Star Trek’s Chris Pine, along with five of his buddies, wrote the comedy script; he’ll produce and star under director Michael Patrick Jann (The State, Reno 911!). Writes Deadline: “The comedy focuses on a group of friends in their early 30s, all in various stages of permanent adolescence. They get together with the aim of helping one of them grow up… ‘I couldn’t be happier to begin the adventure of making Mantivities knowing how much fun we all had writing it,’ Pine said. ‘Somehow I get to laugh with my friends and call it work.’” [Deadline]
Ahead of opening the 65th Cannes Film Festival with tonight’s red-carpet premiere, Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom kicked off the frenzy this morning with a screening and press conference.
Starring Edward Norton, Bruce Willis, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, Jason Schwartzman and Bob Balaban, the film really belongs to newcomers Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward, two kids on the cusp of their teens who fall in love on an island off New England in 1965. The pair make a secret pact to run away together and head to the wilderness, but the authorities are on their trail. Meanwhile, a violent storm brews offshore threatening the enclave. The couple are astonishingly level-headed characters, being chased down by some offbeat adults.
“It’s been awesome, it’s been amazing, my life has really taken a turn,” Gilman said before a packed news conference after the official photo shoot Wednesday morning.
Anderson said he picked his two young stars after 10 months of searching, but found both in what the two-time Oscar nominee described as a magical moment. “There are many people who come along the way,” he explained, “but you always hope there’s this one moment and you say, ‘It’s this.’ I was very charmed by Jared [Gilman] immediately. He made me laugh. As for Kara [Hayward], I had seen so many people do the dialogue over and over and it was like she had just made the dialogue up herself.”
Suzy (Hayward) is surrounded by a large family, including her parents (played by McDormand and Murray). Sam, meanwhile, has no family and is not among the popular kids in his Boy Scout troop. But their union throws the whole island into a frenzy. “I used the memory of what I wanted to have happen as a young person,” said Anderson,…
Also in this morning’s edition of Biz Break: Sony Classics reunites with an Oscar-winner, Music Box takes a risk with a Hemingway, John Woo gets in on a remake, and more…
Samuel Goldwyn Takes Gyllenhaal’s Grassroots
The distributor has announced from Cannes its acquisition of Stephen Gyllenhaal’s activist dramedy featuring Joel David Moore as an idealist running for office — against Cedric the Entertainer — in Seattle in 2001. Jason Biggs, Lauren Ambrose, Cobie Smulders and Tom Arnold co-star.
Susanne Bier’s Latest Lands at Sony Classics
A year after releasing Bier’s Oscar-winning foreign-language feature In a Better World, the venerable art-house distributor has struck a deal to release her follow-up Love is All You Need. Pierce Brosnan leads the romantic comedy, which is set in Sorrento, Italy, and tells the story of “a group of people all seeking love, about passion and happiness, about jealousy and loneliness. First and foremost, it’s a story about having the courage to change your life – even when you think it’s too late.”
And around the ‘net…
Aaron Sorkin Makes Steve Jobs Deal with Sony
It’s official: Sorkin will adapt Walter Isaacson’s best-selling biography for the screen. “There is no writer working in Hollywood today who is more capable of capturing such an extraordinary life for the screen than Aaron Sorkin,” said Sony chief Amy Pascal in a statement. “In his hands, we’re confident that the film will be everything that Jobs himself was: captivating, entertaining, and polarizing.” Deadline reports.
Morgan Freeman’s Political Comments Irk WB Shareholder
The actor’s claims during the Dolphin Tale press tour that the Tea Party movement and Republican politics are “racist and wants to screw the country” drew fire from a shareholder on Tuesday’s Time Warner conference call. TW CEO Jeff…
Yikes, this is not good: “Law enforcement officials confirm … Stahl’s wife filed a missing person’s report with the L.A.P.D. on Monday … saying she last saw the 32-year-old actor on May 9. [... I]t is believed Stahl had been frequenting the Skid Row area of Downtown Los Angeles recently … and there are concerns he may have gotten himself involved in some bad stuff. Back in February, Nick’s wife had filed court papers, expressing serious concerns that Nick may be using drugs … and sources say she fears drugs may have something to do with his disappearance.” [TMZ]
Paramount unveiled the first poster to its imminent Anchorman sequel, which we’ve all been calling Anchorman 2 forever but will apparently have the brassier if more cumbersome title, Anchorman: The Legend Continues. Did we already know this? Sorry if I missed that, seriously, I’m still utterly transfixed by Peter Berg’s geopolitical aplomb. Ron Burgundy couldn’t hold a candle. Anyway, you’ll still call it Anchorman 2, so whatever, have a look.
There seem to be a couple legs missing on the far side; perhaps there were some amputations in the intervening period between the first and second installments? Or maybe it’s just the angle. We’ll see. The teaser trailer emerges this week ahead of The Dictator, so I imagine we’ll be shoveling that your way in the days ahead. Stay tuned!
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Technically the plot of Prometheus is still fairly unknown from the trailers and clips Fox has unleashed, at least insofar as what it is that befalls the intrepid space crew that ventures into unknown horrors in Ridley Scott’s June sci-fi action thriller. But the latest TV spot seems to reveal an awful lot of said horrors — flashes of frights and things and scenes that seem to give good reason for that R rating — so watch at your own risk, because these 30 seconds are at once both awesome and a tad too revealing.
Spoilers ahead!
Behold, the squirmy delights ahead of us all in the June 8 release. All those times Ridley Scott waved away Alien connections as relatively loose associations seem moot after seeing space snakes crawl up into someone’s head and glimpsing whatever it is that’s going on in Noomi Rapace’s belly. “Get it out of me!” is the new “Cut it out!” of Prometheus promo catchphrases.
And can we just talk about that hulking space man for a second? I have no idea what is actually going on here, but I’m getting flashes of Sunshine, if you know what I mean. Taking all speculations in the comments below.
[via i09]
