Get a contract wrong for a movie, and a studio might just end up paying the price a little further down the line…
A word to the wise: when entering into a pact with Tommy Lee Jones, make sure your contract is watertight. Because Mr Jones – he who will not sanction your buffoonery nor crack a smile at your Academy Award presentation skit – will happily take advantage of a typo or poorly-drafted phrase in your written agreement.
Mr Jones claims he took a lower salary to star in 2007’s Oscar-winning No Country For Old Men due to the provision of generous box office bonuses should the film prove a financial success. Directors Joel and Ethan Coen and producer Scott Rudin came to similar agreements – although it was a bit of a gamble on all their parts. You see, the parties would only receive their full and substantial bonuses when either the domestic box office receipts reached a pre-agreed threshold, or when worldwide box office receipts reached twice the domestic level. And despite the critical acclaim the film received, neither of these scenarios came to pass.
But Paramount – the studio behind the film – had a problem: the lawyers it hired to finalise the agreement had made a rather significant snafu. The way it had drafted the contracts, it suggested that the lucrative bonuses would be paid once worldwide box office receipts, when multiplied by two, reached the levels prescribed for domestic box office success. And they very much did.
When Paramount informed the parties of the error, the Coen brothers and Rudin were happy to amend their contracts to reflect the agreement they had reached in principle. But Mr Jones did not: he stuck his heels in and took Paramount to court. The adjudicating judge had to side with the wording of the contract and, despite the studio’s protestations, it was forced to pay the actor $12.5 million more than if the contract had been written correctly.
The legal ramifications didn’t stop there, because Paramount tried to recoup some of its losses by charging $2.75 million to an investment company with a 25 percent stake in the movie. It figured a share in the profits also meant taking a proportional hit on the contract error. Funnily enough, the investment company disagreed and took Paramount to court again (although the studio would emerge victorious on this occasion and the subsequent appeal).
This is all public record – the official rulings can be found easily enough – but it’s a rare peek behind the curtain. Unless a dispute makes it to court, the contents of a Hollywood contract aren’t often made available for public consumption. Beyond knowing how many Marvel films an actor has signed up for, we tend to remain in the dark about the stipulations they demand or, indeed, are bound by.
Hollywood used to be a lot more open about such matters. At the height of the ‘studio system’ in the 1930s and 40s, stars and starlets were treated as commodities in much the same way professional footballers are today. They would sign for a ‘team’ – Warner Bros. or MGM, say – and that studio would then essentially own them. This would oblige them to star in the films they wanted them to star in, and having full control over their image rights and commercial equity.
As Clarke Gable once said in an interview at the height of his popularity, “I have never been consulted as to what part I would like to play. I am not paid to think.”
The power balance has shifted significantly in the modern era, with movie stars working in more of a freelance capacity, meaning studios have to acquiesce much more frequently if they want to secure their dream casting. When you’re box office gold – and the studio calculates that your name on the poster will sell more tickets – you can start to make certain demands. Samuel L Jackson is said to insist upon a clause that allows him to golf at least twice a week while shooting; Roger Moore got an unlimited supply of Montecristo cigars written into his first Bond contract.
A slightly more altruistic example of star bargaining power is the recent emergence of “inclusion riders”. An idea first floated by Stacy Smith in a 2016 TED talk, it gained more public awareness when Frances McDormand eulogised about them in her most recent Oscar acceptance speech (for her role in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri).
They’re essentially a way to force studios into creating more opportunities for minority or poorly-represented groups within the industry. So, if you want Brie Larson to headline your latest movie, she might only accept the role if you can guarantee more diversity among the cast and crew. It’s an interesting and noble idea, but one that arguably hasn’t yet had much of an effect on Hollywood demographics. Possibly because the number of stars who can boss the terms of their contract to such an extent is still relatively small – and the proportion who ‘walk the walk’ as well as ‘talking the talk’ is probably smaller still.
The modern era hasn’t rendered studios completely impotent – especially when they’re in the fortunate position of dictating terms with young, inexperienced talent eager for their first big shot. It’s fairly well-known that Edward Norton only agreed to do the remake of The Italian Job for Paramount because it had him locked into a three-picture deal – its reward for taking a punt on the then-unknown actor when casting him in Primal Fear.
What’s less well-known is that this state of affairs evolved over several years and developed into a subtle game of chicken between both parties.
Paramount kept sending Norton potential scripts for him to see out his contract, but he politely declined each and every one. Evidently trying to run down the clock on the option the studio had on him, things first came to a head when Paramount threatened to block Norton’s involvement in Fight Club, demanding that he star in one of their pictures instead.
Such was his passion for David Fincher’s seminal feature, Ed reluctantly sat down with Paramount lawyers and thrashed out a new agreement, that actually seemed to favour the actor quite significantly: Paramount’s option on him would be extended, but he would only have to do one film – not two – and he’d be paid a lot more for it than the original contract stated. But, if they couldn’t mutually agree on a project within 18 months, Paramount would have another 24 months to assign a film of their choosing – whether Norton liked it or not.
Reader, they could not agree.
It is unclear which party was being the most difficult, but after various starring vehicles were turned down by Norton, the script for The Italian Job came with a memo that – to paraphrase – read: ‘do this movie or we’ll sue your ass.’ No doubt weighing up the risk of litigation versus his acting integrity, Norton blinked first and agreed to do the movie. By all accounts he was extremely professional and amenable on set – but tellingly he was absent from the vast majority of the film’s marketing and publicity.
Of course, contracts are not always a Faustian pact between a nefarious studio and a naïve actor. As the concept of the inclusion rider shows, sometimes they can be a force for good – or a way of looking out for your friends at any rate…
The late, great director Garry Marshall was so close to his lifelong pal Hector Elizondo that he put a clause in his contracts to ensure the actor was guaranteed a role in all of his films. Go ahead and check IMDb; you’ll notice an Elizondo appearance in every major theatrical release Marshall ever directed. Some were uncredited cameos, and some were major supporting roles – he’s probably best known to this day as the kindly hotel manager in Pretty Woman – but Marshall made sure his friend would always share in his success. Adorably, Elizondo spent a long time never suspecting that such a big chunk of his filmography was down to a contractual stipulation.
“He never told me,” he revealed in an interview after the director’s death. “He was a kind man, an elegant man, and a loyal, loyal man.”
If only more of us had a friend like Garry.
But while it’s all well and good being the unsuspecting beneficiary of such kindness, most actors have to work a little harder to score a gig, and their relief at landing a role might make them a little reticent to endanger their casting with too many provisos. Sometimes, though, foresight forces an actor’s hand, and they take a risk on putting a line in the contract that acts as their line in the sand.
Dolph Lundgren was in no doubt that a starring role in Masters Of The Universe could be a major turning point in his career. He would be playing He-Man, after all: one of the most iconic characters of the 1980s. With hindsight, we now know that expectation to have been a little fanciful, but at the time it would have taken a brave person to bet against the film being a colossal hit. Lundgren was concerned though.
Worried that his strong Swedish accent would result in his performance getting the Hercules In New York treatment (where a young Schwarzenegger had his entire performance dubbed with an American voiceover) he got his agent to negotiate a very specific clause in his contract: he would get at least three cracks at every single line-reading.
Evidently, the studio’s desire to procure the services of the muscular blonde (which, let’s not be coy, were probably very reasonably-priced) meant they accepted the terms. And Dolph’s ploy worked: the monotonous drawl you hear emanating from Lundgren’s sinewy throat is indeed all his.
Perhaps we should all take a leaf out of Mr Lundgren’s book and be a little braver in our negotiating. The next time your mobile phone provider asks you to renew your 12-month contract, instead of extra minutes why not bamboozle customer services by demanding a weekly motivational phone call to boost your confidence? Before closing the deal on a new house, ask if the current owners would contractually bind themselves into joining your pub quiz team – someone with that many DVDs on their shelf is bound to be useful in the film rounds…
As Hollywood is quick to prove: if someone desperately wants to lock you into an agreement, it’s surprising just how much they’ll bend over backwards to get you to sign on the dotted line.
And one more thing…
While a hastily-signed contract earlier in a career can lead to actors finding themselves in films they’d rather not have appeared in – and for not a lot of money – the opposite can also happen. Sometimes, a studio has so little faith in a movie that they fail to negotiate an option on the stars’ return in any potential sequels.
Wayne’s World was an unexpected smash hit for (recurring theme, here) Paramount Pictures, and so a sequel was a no-brainer; especially if the ‘low production costs’ to ‘high box-office takings’ ratio could be retained. The only problem was that none of the key on-screen talent had agreed to terms should they be asked to return for a follow-up. Unsurprisingly, when negotiations began for the sequel, agents valued their client’s participation far more highly than the no-doubt modest payments received for the original film. This made what should have been a cheap cash-in for the studio a far more expensive endeavour…
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