And it's truly amazing:
... [S]tudios are finally starting to realize that they don't need to pay stars $20 million a film or give them a big chunk of the revenues, as they had reflexively done for years. Julia Roberts now gets closer to $12 million. Travolta, who got $20 million for the fire disaster movie Ladder 49 in 2004, is said to have received half that for his role in The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3.
I'm so old that I remember when Jim Carrey got up to $25 million a picture and studio execs were wailing in agony about the $20 million price barrier being breached. But with the collapsing economy, and the various star vehicles that are under-performing, the trend line appears to be bending the other way.
... [S]ays Paul Dergarabedian, box office analyst for Hollywood.com, studios [in earlier times] would have scrambled to find a big-name star to play Captain James T. Kirk and other crew members for this summer's Star Trek. Instead, Paramount (VIA) selected a cast of relative nobodies, amped up the special effects, and "made it all about J.J. Abrams,"
But this "let the films be the stars" thingamabob isn't a new phenomenon ...
When I was a lad, my old man (a Disney employee) said at dinner one night:
"You know, Walt doesn't pay anything for the actors in his movies. He gets them on the way up [Julie Andrews] or on the way down [Fred MacMurray]. That's why the movies don't cost very much ..."
Dad made this observation in the early sixties, around the time 20th Century-Fox was paying a fortune for Elizabeth Taylor to appear in Cleopatra. This "hire 'em cheap" policy remained the Mouse House's religion long after Walt Disney's death, and continued to pay off handsomely. The highest-grossing live action film of 1969 was from Disney, and starred Dean Jones, Buddy Hackett and Suzanne Pleshette. It was titled The Love Bug.
So this hire-less-expensive-actors strategy is hardly new.
As regards animated features, big stars attached to big salaries was never a consideration until Jeffrey Katzenberg made the concept standard operating procedure for DreamWorks Animation. Before J.K., animation producers seldom employed mega-stars as voice talent*.
Today, all the producers of animated features use bigger names, but how much value this adds to the final product remains unclear. Kung Fu Panda made gargantuan dollars with Jack Black, Angelina Jolie and Dustin Hoffman behind the mic, but Brad Pitt did little to boost Sinbad. And Up one of the biggest grossers of the year, employs a 79-year-old tv actor in the lead role.
Please don't strap me into a straitjacket for suggesting this, but maybe it's the quality of the movie that's most important, and not the price tag of the actor.
* Bing Crosby in Disney's Sleepy Hollow could be the exception.
Posts
10 comments:
Save the $20 million and give it to the story artists, animators and other production people.
I don't know why anyone would go see an animated feature because some particular Hollywood actor had provided a voice for a character. I actually prefer not to know who did a voice because then all I'd hear is the actor, not the character.
For example, Cliff Edwards' voice for Jiminy Cricket was perfect. Anytime you hear it you think, "That's Jiminy Cricket," not, "Ooh! That's Cliff Edwards!"
Now if they could find a way for some cartoon character to provide a voice for a live action actor, that would be interesting.
>Now if they could find a way for some cartoon character to provide a voice for a live action actor, that would be interesting.
I second that motion. Now that would be a giant step forward for LA.
Wasn't Touchstone originally successful taking the likes of Bette and Danny on their way down and making small hits like Ruthless People in the 80's? I mean, what the hell happened? The moguls forget their own history when the money comes rushing in. D'oh!
Hopefully this is a final curtain for Brangelina. At least until the next steroid econ. recovery.
I find the entire practice of paying big stars large salaries for VO work utterly disgusting. It does nothing in my opinion to elevate the film.
I agree with the earlier poster about taking those moneys and spending it on better stories and better production values. This why I always think anything from Dreamworks is lacking in many ways.
One of the best voices I remember hearing was the character of "Edna 'E' Mole" of the Incredibles which was voiced by Brad Bird.
"You know, Walt doesn't pay anything for the actors in his movies. He gets them on the way up [Julie Andrews] or on the way down [Fred MacMurray].
Thus was the observation that, whenever possible, Disney had a recruiter at the back door of the Betty Ford clinic and many of the marquee stars that they did sign had just ended a stay there and were now trying to get their act together again.
(Robin Williams, Eddie Murphy, Mel Gibson)
The calculation with big star voices is that they will bring free publicity to the PR campaign.
I'd venture that that really helped the first Shrek get off the ground. Mike Meyers and Cameron Diaz were riding waves at the time. Eddie Murphy not so much, but he had notoriety.
The MSM will fawn over these people and give them air time to babble about their current project in a way that they won't for a June Foray or a Billy West.
When you can undo that reality, you'll have justice.
Naaah!. I agree with the first poster.
It's even worse when the voice of the character sounds familiar, and you end up trying to figure out who's voice for half of the movie. Or, if you know who the voice is, it's impossible to link the voice to the character, since you're picturing the actor talking. It's definetly distracting.
Emphasis should be put on storytelling, not the voice actors. Otherwise is just trying to invest the movie with glamour which I find unesesary and quite shallow.
r.
"For example, Cliff Edwards' voice for Jiminy Cricket was perfect. Anytime you hear it you think, 'That's Jiminy Cricket," not, "Ooh! That's Cliff Edwards!'"
That's true today, but not when the movie was new. Edwards was a popular radio performer at the time, and his voice would have been VERY familiar to audiences during the initial release of Pinocchio.
I agree with anon. 7:56. It's all about the junkets. You will never see professional voice actors or cartoon characters interviewed on talk shows.
Voice actors are infinitely more interesting than anyone that currently appears on any of the late night talk shows. late night died sometime in the 70's and has since become a dull, rigged, canned-laughter commercial for corporate ownership of all things consumable.
Hey, I'm not defending the practice, I'm just telling it like it is.
Actually, I think it's a poor trade-off; a bad or bland voice performance that will stay on the sound track forever for a month of high profile publicity consisting of interviews in which the celebrity voice actor spends 90% of the time in small talk banter with the host and only deigns to mention the film in passing.
It's only what the producers and marketing execs think works. They stubbornly believe that all box office is celebrity driven. That's why these stars get so much money. If you look at reality, you will see that video bins are filled with bad films featuring high profile actors that failed at the box office.
Unfortunately, these beliefs "die hard."
Post a Comment