Matt Damon reveals he turned down 10 percent of the profits from Avatar, which: Whoops
Damon says James Cameron offered him 10 percent to star in Avatar, a payday that would have eventually totaled more than $280 million
Film News Matt Damon
Hey, here’s a quick, fun math question: What’s 10 percent of $2.847 billion? If you answered “So much money that Matt Damon could have bought one of those islands where they let you hunt a guy, because who’s going to stop you, it’s your dang island,” then, congratulations: You have passed a very important class in cinematic math that Matt Damon, tragically, did not.
Because, as it turns out, that big bag of cash is exactly what Damon apparently passed on a decade back, when James Cameron came knocking asking if he might want to star in a little movie called Avatar—offering 10 percent of the profits in an effort to lure the name star on to his plucky lil’ project. But, as Damon revealed in a session at Cannes this weekend, he turned the role down, because he was committed to the Jason Bourne movies at the time, and wanted to make the “moral” choice, i.e.—the choice where you don’t end up getting $200 million for your private murder island. “I will go down in history,” Damon said in his masterclass at the film festival. “You will never meet an actor who turned down more money.”
To be fair, Damon didn’t seem to be too bothered by the missed payday, laughing about it with the audience and recalling telling the same anecdote to his pal John Krasinski, who responded by noting that, “Nothing would be different in your life if you had done Avatar, except you and me would be having this conversation in space.” Also, it meant that Sam Worthington got to play the character of Jake Sully, and while the largely unknown Worthington definitely didn’t get the same deal offered to him, it does mean we get the ongoing paradox of the planet’s most successful movie starring a guy whose face we couldn’t pick out of a lineup to save our lives.
Per Deadline, Damon also held court on a number of other topics during his panel—ostensibly in support of Stillwater, which is premiering at the festival. That includes his near-misses with directing (most notably on Manchester By The Sea), and what life is like when you’re hanging out with Brad Pitt, one of the few people on the planet more ridiculously famous than Matt Damon: “It was absolute madness,” Damon said, describing a trip with Pitt to the Monaco Grand Prix. “I got arm-barred by security and I had to say, ‘I’m with Brad!’”
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10% of profits would not be 10% of the box office gross. Likely the studio would have found a way to claim Avatar lost money.
Nah, they’re not that talented. A lot of the time in big movies, you have a lot of profit participation, but Cameron’s the only one who could’ve commanded that on Avatar. Profits were likely around $800m-$1b. So Damon passed on $80-100m.
80-100M? Pfft. Chump change. Not even a story.
Seriously though, dude’s probably worth a healthy 8 figures regardless, and he missed out on a year+ of his life spent in front of a green screen with a completely shitty script (which sounds like a real nightmare for an actor).
A quick Google search puts his net worth at $170M, so yeah he’s doing just fine.
Considering he’s made 100 million or more the Bourne movies, it’s a wash, really.
You’re drastically underestimating how good at fucking over creatives Hollywood studio accounting departments are. Some examples of movies that have (according to their studios) never turned a net profit: Return of the Jedi, Forrest Gump, Men in Black, Spider-Man, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix… the list goes on. My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which grossed over $350 million on a $5 million budget, “lost money” according the studio that released it.
New Line tried to convince Peter Jackson that the Lord of the Rings trilogy lost money as well.
Columbia is really just an intern at Sony
Jackson did insist on using real Mithril for the props.
I heard the authentic lembas was kinda nasty, though.
The Mithril wasn’t what caused the budget to go over though— it was all the insurance payouts they had to make to the Dwarves getting injured while fighting the various Goblins and Trolls guarding it
No they didn’t. What the fuck are you talking about? Jackson sued over points on gross and they settled and then he agreed to make another trilogy for them. New Line never claimed the trilogy lost money, which would be absurd to even try. The argument was over how many hundreds of millions were considered gross.
It didn’t do as well as we thought. We can pay you in taters.
Jackson got paid – they fucked over the cast who got paid next to nothing for their work.
and Meet the Feebles.
They made sure it The Hobbit lost money just in case Peter Jackson tried that “audit” business again.
The issue is typically gross points vs net points. With gross, you get your percentage off the top before any of that creative accounting happens. That’s what Nicholson got on Batman. He was paid $6MM up front, but got $90MM as part of his profit sharing arrangement.All these horror stories typically involve net points, which is where you get a percentage of the money made after a film has turned a profit. This is where the creative accounting comes into play.Someone like Damon is going to get gross points, so it’s a non issue. Net points are typically reserved for screwing over lesser known actors and primarily the authors of books upon which adaptations are based. It looks enticing on paper, but isn’t worth anything.
well first you add in the marketing, which you never admit how much it costs if the movie isn’t a huge hit, and then you can probably add in every single cost of a courier delivering a can of film (when that still happened) or maybe a $50 service fee for every time the digital file was emailed and then…didn’t those people at the courier company and ad company eat lunch every day? RIGHT so there goes $40 per employee and you know who bought a $2MM pair of shoes for the premiere that were a necessary expenditure? THIS GUY
General rule for marketing a movie is half the production budget. It doesn’t get followed all the time (many movies failed because there wasn’t enough awareness), but you can assume quite certainly that Avatar spent at least that.
Add to that “Back to the Future”.I had no idea that forensic accounting is a common practice for better known actors to regularly do to studios. It’s like every year they say to their accountant “Ok, request and comb through their books”. They do and turn up some owed money. The studio says “Oh our bad! here it is!”The next fiscal year, they go through it all again.
Kevin Smith said Clerks was billed for 25 percent of the “Miramax yacht” at Cannes even though Pulp Fiction was their prize movie that year.
My Big Fat Greek Wedding didn’t “lose money” and Gold Circle never claimed it did. Nor did any of the other movies you mentioned that I’m familiar with the accounting on. Gold Circle paid out over $40 mil in points even before the lawsuit. The issue in that particular case was that Gold Circle was claiming around $280 mil in box office receipts when outside trackers were putting it closer to $350 mil. Still shifty, but they weren’t claiming a loss. That whole thing was a mess too because Vardalos had given so many points to the various early backers of the film, both net, gross and distribution, that she effectively broke 100% in the full calculation and owed people more money the more successful the film was. Tom Hanks production company eventually threw its weight around and resolved that so Vardalos actually made some money on the film, but not much compared to its gross.
As I understand it, in the original script, the movie ended with all of the characters singing “Prisoners of Love,” but they rewrote it because Mel Brooks demanded 50% of the profits.
The LA Times had an excellent breakdown of movie money shenanigans in their breakdown of Sahara, the least-worst Clive Cussler movie: “$78 million of red ink?” https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-movie15apr15-story.htmlYou know, Cussler got a lot of shit for that lawsuit, but good on him, in my opinion.And yeah, it was a terrible movie of the book.
Absolutely true. Same way billionaires & big corps like amazon don’t pay taxes. Our tax system is trash.
You’re forgetting about the $345 million marketing budget for My Big Fat… Greek… Wedding…. Hmm.
Maybe something fishy going on there.
Isn’t Rain Man still in debt?
I don’t know if I’d use the same language as you did in your first sentence, but I would say that’s generally what we accept as workers of the corporate structure. I think counter to your point, Hollywood is one of the few areas where a worker can make more than the boss. Hollywood stars can make many multiples of a lifetime of earnings for even an upper middle class worker. These are exceptional cases, but there are many of them. Is The Rock worth what he makes? Vin Diesel? Ben Affleck? Tom Cruise? I’m not saying their job is easy, but is it more difficult than the one that you do? Aside from the CEO of most large multinational corporations, do workers make a lifetime’s earnings in a single project? I don’t for one moment think that Hollywood is perfect, but to say that the creatives are getting the short end of the stick isn’t totally fair.
Ghostbusters too. Sigourney Weaver only got her percentage paid because they wanted her for the sequel.
Phone’s for you. I think it’s Art Buchwald.
You’re probably right that it is unlikely the studio could show no profit on Avatar, but I would bet they could get that profit to way lower than the number you gave.I mean look at what major companies are able to do with creative accounting. Look at what sports teams do. There was a great article the other day about how Steve Ballmer (owner of Clippers) is able to pay less taxes than minimum wage workers do (in %).
and yet the most profitable movies of all time, movies that have made over 400 million dollars in the box office alone, on budgets under 50 million, or billion dollar movies with 1oo million dollar budgets still lose money.Return of the jedi,harry potter, the lord of the fucking rings, didn’t make any money aparently.
You have absolute zero knowledge of what you’re talking about.
In the eyes of the IRS, states, and for tax purposes, most movies never make a profit.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/09/how-hollywood-accounting-can-make-a-450-million-movie-unprofitable/245134/Hell, lord of the rings trilogy “lost” money
Other outlets are reporting $1.2B before the China re-release this year, so $120M is probably the best estimate.
Hardly “hunt a guy” money.
OK. So it’d probably have to be a murder islet.
There’s literally a term for it. Hollywood Math. The short version is they setup a shell company for each film. The studio who owns the shell company charges the shell company obscene “management fees”, such that the finances within the shell company (a single film) show a net loss. This keeps the film from legally having to pay any profit sharing to actors or anyone else who negotiated such language into the contract.
“Nah, they’re not that talented.”
It’s cute that you know literally not a single thing about Hollywood accounting.
To a major-league international movie star, I don’t think $80-100M is necessarily worth the opportunity cost and the indignity.
This is true due to Hollywood accounting but people like Matt Damon wouldn’t take that deal. The deal would be against gross because he and his manager are aware of all the tricks that would cheat Damon out of his salary entirely. Then that $280m would come out of the gross. It would be a terrible deal for Cameron but I imagine Cameron, at the time, thought the movie would do poorly without an A-lister in the lead. Obviously he went with a largely unknown actor, at least compared to Damon, and everything went fine financially, but if he took Damon’s offer then he’d pay that 280m out of the profit which would most likely be in the hundreds of millions anyway. Also I imagine that 10% would come with strings after final negotiations like it has a cap at $50m, is 10% only after x amount made to guarantee profit for Cameron, is 5% for Avatar I and 5% for Avatar II, etc. The 10% offer is just an entry point into final negotiations.
As a wise old CFO once told me: “Careful with financials from an industry whose primary product is works of fiction.”
Total cost including marketing would’ve been roughly $355M. That still leaves $2.5B to distribute. No amount of creative accounting could hide that profit.
It depends if he was offered net or gross. A-listers can get gross, meaning a flat percentage of the box office. Nobody takes net, also called points, unless they have no choice. Even if your movie was successful the studio can distribute the losses on other movies it did that fiscal year and show no net profits.
Yeah Downey got gross points for Avengers I think. This post uses the terms interchangeably when they’re not so I have no idea which is the case and I really don’t want to click through to do the research.
It’s hard to tell, because even clicking through to the source doesn’t give us an exact quote.
Sounds like Damon was offered net: James Cameron came knocking asking if he might want to star in a little movie called Avatar—offering 10 percent of the profits in an effort to lure the name star on to his plucky lil’ projectWhich means he wouldn’t have seen Dime One.
Depends on the deal. Arnold and Danny Devito got a percentage of the gross on Twins.
“Yeah, we totally paid $1500/pound to J. Cameron Catering for the celery on the craft services table. Sorry, Matt.”
This. Author is mixing gross revenue (income before expenses) and net profit (after expenses). They’re not the same thing. And Hollywood is famous for their accounting tricks to make it look like wildly profitable movies lost money (so they don’t have to pay anyone with profit sharing bonuses in their contracts).
They used to do that all the time, but actors got wise to it long ago.If you get fleeced that way nowdays, that’s on you (or your agents/lawyers).
Executive Producers get gross points.
This explains why he’s been wearing nothing but a barrel with suspenders since Avatar came out.
No, that’s just due to his oak barrel fetish.
I miss that look but I see why it’s not practical. Even a cheap off-brand wooden barrel is going to cost a hobo more than a set of clothes.
Yesterday’s barrel is today’s pallet.
Or a cardboard box. When the trope of hoboes wearing barrels originated, lots of food and other items were shipped in barrels, and stores would simply take the top off to sell from them in bulk (flour, sugar, etc.) . So empty ones could easily be found for free.
Do you know how much Whisky distilleries will pay for an old barrel!
Not if it was full of pickles
One of my favorite Michael Che things from SNL is one of the times when crude oil prices were very, very low, and he said “Oil fell to $40 a barrel, which is, let’s face it, a pretty good price just for the barrel.”
Do you know how much Whisky distilleries will pay for an old barrel!Not after a hobo’s been wearing it around.Then again…
Yes.
Plus the shoulder straps, and the nails to affix the straps to the barrel. It all adds up….
You could just cop one from Cracker Barrel
Being a hobo is a lifestyle, and you’ve got to commit.
Clothes were much more expensive in inflation-adjusted terms at the time the barrel-clad hobo trope first originated. In 2021, wearing a barrel is impractical because everyone in the West has access to cheap mass-produced clothes sewn by Uighur slave labor, but back in the early 20th century a barrel was probably more competitive from a cost perspective.
Yeah, but you can piss yourself in a barrel and stay relatively dry. What hobo wouldn’t want that?
Who’s to say that Avatar would’ve made any money if Matt Damon was in the cast.
I saw him jump down a waterfall while wearing it.
Glad someone get the reference!!
It’s called fashion.
https://www.ted.com/profiles/28266504
https://www.imdb.com/user/ur132991274/?ref_=nv_usr_prof_2
https://www.bly.com/blog/general/why-i-answer-almost-every-query-i-get/?unapproved=1404438&moderation-hash=284f90abec80d10a17e55f58f6cbafb5#comment-1404438
https://www.bly.com/blog/general/why-i-answer-almost-every-query-i-get/#comment-1297228
https://www.bly.com/blog/general/why-i-answer-almost-every-query-i-get/#comment-1297227
https://telegra.ph/Subaru-SUV-for-Towing-in-2020-05-25
https://www.vingle.net/posts/3739474
https://www.hackathon.io/256449
I blame the designer barrel fad for increasing the prices.
The official uniform of Portlanders!
Good for him. Also, it’s not like he needs the money in any way, at all. He probably still has “hunt a guy on his own island” money.
But does he have “hunt a guy in space” money?
That is a real interesting moral problem… you could earn 10% of the profits of Avatar… but you have to work intensely with James Cameron. Is that money worth the emotional pain?
Eeehh.. Shit happens. Take for instance stock that I had in a company I worked for. I sold it around 35 cents a share for $250 because I needed money. Now that stock is trading at $5,060 and if I would have held onto the stock, well, it would be worth $3.6 mil if I did my math correctly.
My ex-father-in-law is an architect and contractor. In the mid-90s his buddy asked him to be a partner on a building project in Downtown LA, before the Staples Center where the Lakers play was built. He said, ‘nah Downtown is dead, nothing but bums’. While post-Covid that’s become true again, but pre-Covid Downtown LA became a redevelopment miracle. His buddy went on to become a huge developer in the city and is easily worth over a billion now.
Yeah I worked on a virtual reality database of the area around the Staples Center years ago and recreated some of the buildings around it. Fast forward 20 years and it has changed a lot since then with all the parking lots that were there being filled in with theaters and shopping.
I love these stories. In the 80s someone asked my dad if we wanted to go in halfsies with him to buy warehouses in Irvine that were going for $10-20 per square foot. My dad scoffed at the idea because Orange County was just a shitty roadstop on your way to San Diego. These warehouses in Irvine now sell for $20 mil plus.
Exactly.He didn’t turn down a giant dump truck full of money. He turned down a payday of unknown size that might not even have happened had things gone poorly.This reads more to me like “Matt Damon not impressed by Avatar script, even offering him a percentage of the profits couldn’t get him on board”.
To be fair, MOST people weren’t impressed by the Avatar script.
To be fairer, Fox shareholders were ecstatic with Avatar’s box office. Plus, Disney shareholders in the coming years…
My dad turned down “worthless” land deals in FL, SC, and NC, each of them would have paid him several million bucks when that land became hotels and shopping, etc. Next he turned down KFC(Didn’t like the partners in the group) then McDonald’s, BK, and finally Wendy’s franchise deals (“How many damn hamburgers can they sell?”, well, a lot). Then after my dad died, my mom had this stock that did nothing for years and years, she finally sold it and bought a house, which she doubled her money on in less than 5 years. A few years later, that stock would have been worth about $3 million. My turn to lose out came about 1985. I had this stock that started out about $12 a share, and kept slowly going down and down and down. When it got to $2+ change, I had enough of the torture, and sold it. For about a year, it slowly went down to less than $2, and I thought, “Good riddance!”, and didn’t check on it for a while. When I was at the doctor’s office one morning, I looked at the stock prices in the paper, and it was almost $70/share, and that was after a 3 for 2 split a couple of months earlier. Another split along with a some other stock due to some sort of merger came soon after. I wasn’t going to make or lose anything, so I haven’t followed what’s been happening the last couple of years. I just looked it up and it’s at $72+/share. If I had held onto it, with the splits and whatever, I would be sitting on about a half million. Oh well.
The best cure for this kind of regret is to realize that, if the stock is at 72, and you bought it at 15 (ignoring the split math), you probably would have sold it at 30 anyway.I once bought 100 shares Netflix at 30, forgot about it, and sold it at 100 a couple of years later when I heard it was popping. So, great! Except that it’s done a 7/1 split AND is now trading at 535 which is 3745 adjusted, so instead of making $7k I would have made about $35k. But I didn’t.
I’m convinced that a lot of the time, you should just forget about the stock and come back in 10 years and see if you hit the jackpot or not. My uncle and aunt sat on the stock my mom sold off and ended up with some decent “leave it to the grandkids” money. Funny thing, my aunt’s grandson was a failed inventor, dud after dud, borrowing money from grandma, and trying to borrow from my mother and my uncle to bring interesting, at best, items to market. About the time his grandmother died, he finally nailed one, and made several million dollars on it. When he was trying to get backing money from mom, I thought, “Another one of his go nowhere inventions”, and about a year later, I saw it in the stores. Pretty much every store. He didn’t need that money by then, grandma’s estate had been settled and he and his sister split about 5 million after it was all said and done. He has a nice collection of Corvettes and muscle cars now.
A bit like this story from Gizmodo down here in Australia – the author had $25 worth of bitcoin on a hard drive that he threw away – the title of the link gives you a clue as to what happened:https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/05/i-threw-away-4-8-million-in-bitcoin/The amount quoted in the title isn’t accurate now though – it’s $US47M at current trading prices…
Exhibit A– https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/07/how-facebook-graffiti-artist-david-choe-earned-200-million.html
That you, Peter Thiel?
I worked for Amazon in the late 90’s, during the period when people questioned as to whether the company would ever be profitable, right after the boom period when receptionists were retiring with millions in stock. They had just started selling CD’s and DVD’s is how long ago it was. I was expected to work 80-90 hour weeks on a garbage salary based on the future value of my stock options.When I quit I choose not to buy the options I had vested since it would have cost me about $19,000 that I didn’t have (see: garbage salary) and the strike price on the options was 4 times higher than what it was trading at. Had I bought them, and held onto them until today (unlikely) they would be worth about $4 million. If I had kept working until all of my options had vested they’d be worth about $30 million today. But the reality is continuing to work there would have driven me to suicide long before I ever got rich. Quitting was one of the most emotionally satisfying moments of my life. Also, Bezos didn’t wash his hands after using the bathroom.
Totally believe you on the not washing the hands. Very driven and successful people are near sociopaths.
Uh huh…on the plus side for Damon, he didn’t have to be in the pile of monkey crap that was Avatar. James Cameron hasn’t had a good directorial day since 1991.
Insanely rich person is slightly less rich. Boo fucking hoo.
Many big mistakes here. First: Damon never specified if it was profit or gross (though these deals are very rarely on gross). He only said it was “10% of it”.Second: $2.847 billion is the box office gross, not profit. Net profit was estimated at about $1.034 billion. If it were “10 percent of the profits” as you said, it would only be $103.4 million.
isn’t it weird how many times being in a huge movie does NOT help somebody’s career particularly? sorry I just caught up with the seventh season of the Joel David Moore Show on my DVR.
Hell, the Best Supporting Actor/Actress award history is littered with people it didn’t help.
The weirdest example is the F&F franchise. Anyone who wasn’t already famous before joining the cast is still not that famous even though each movie earns around $1 billion.
Do you mean Tyrese and Ludacris? Because Gal Gadot got pretty big. Jordana Brewster, however, not exactly a swiss army knife. It actually seemed like her career was kind of a non-starter when she got F&F, then was going nowhere after, then the F&F movies just kept going and that IS her career. Michelle Rodriguez could have been much bigger but she’s apparently a real jerk, which is a shame because I like her as a performer (esp in Resident Evil). I saw her at a supermarket and she’s WOW in person, she was giving everybody the stink eye. I mean, she has been in Avatar and stuff. btw apparently the races in F7 were called the “Race Wars”…lol
All of them except Gal and Vin, basically. Paul was also famous but moreso in the car community since he was a real gearhead. The rest never got that spark in their career a franchise this big can produce.And totally agree about Michelle. She’s great in my book, but I hope I never meet her lol
Well…the franchise initially did kind of fail into B/C gradeness, so Walker never really would have got that bump until it was commonly accepted as ascendant again around F7/F8 and you know what happened—he also did get a chance with Running Scared and a few others, he just never broke, but you are right of course. I always think about Ludacris as a rapper who just does these particular movies, but I’m sure he actually wants to be Tom Cruise and Tyrese does as well. Nathalie Emmanuel I would hold off on because her time still might be coming.
So James Cameron is ultimately responsible for Sam Worthington. They literally scraped him off the street.I mean, I’m glad Avatar made Sam Worthington not-homeless anymore.
I like Worthington’s performance in Avatar. Him being an unknown actor makes the fish-out-of-water aspect of the story stronger in my book. Damon has been in quite a few movies, you know his face, and his voice. It’s harder to think of him as an ex-jarhead nobody down on his luck….Then again, I really friggin’ loved Avatar, so I may be biased. 😀
I’m inclined to agree but I’m not sure if that’s more telling of how fantastic the groundbreaking computer special effects were in Avatar.
Honestly, I don’t think Sam Worthington is a terrible actor. He just doesn’t have any personality, charm or screen presence. He’s handsome enough but without any distinguishing features.
I know Sam Worthington as the guy who when I see his name I think it’s Sam Rockwell for a moment then am sad to realize it’s not.
You’re fucked up.
Every time I try to visualize Sam Worthington I come up with Jeremy Renner and think “no, that’s not right…”
I loved ‘The Warriors’. It’s a cult classic but ever since Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, Jeremy Renner will always be my poor-man’s Christopher Lambert.
That’s James Remar . . .though for a second I was imagining a 90’s era Jeremy Renner in that Mortal Kombat movie.
heheehehh
As an Australian, I would have preferred Matt Damon (or at least that they made Jake Sully Australian if Sam Worthington was in the part).I’ve been surprised again and again learning actors are actually Australian post seeing them in shows playing Americans. John Noble and Anna Torv on Fringe. Mallory Jensen and even the guy who plays Lincoln on Agents of SHIELD.At the time of Avatar at least, Sam Worthington was not one of those people.(Maybe he got better, I don’t know but back in 2009, both in Avatar and Terminator: Salvation, his accent was doing a real slip and slide.)
Aussies play Americans so often that I was really surprised when Chris Hemsworth was playing an actual Australian in that Netflix action movie he was in recently.
So now there’s an angle of national pride involved? lol Not having a problem with the wonky accent by the way – who knows what Earth society really looks like in the bleak future we see in the movie. Could be people from all over ending up as cogs in the uncaring machine as it grinds them up…Btw, you’re not forgetting Guy Pierce and Russell Crowe, are you?Funny story you may already know: they both had their hollywood breakthroughs in the ‘90s hardboiled noire movie L.A. Confidential. During casting, studio bigwig asks director who he intends to portray Edmund Exley. “This unknown but excellent australian guy here”, director says, and is met with hemming and hawing and complaints and more than a suggestion he pick a recognizable, more commercially reliable face instead. “So who’s your Bud White then?”, bigwig asks. “Errrrrrr… This unknown australian guy here…” *Bigwig’s head promptly explodes*lol Fucking hollywood, eh!
No, not really. I would have just liked someone put in a better performance in the role. I’m not parochial that way.
Ok, well, I for one appreciated his efforts. Wasn’t terribly keen on him in Terminator Genisys, but then again that was a pretty bad movie overall so I can’t really blame him for that. After all, an actor can only work with the material and direction he’s given…
Sam Worthington seems to have that thing where some Australians lose all of their personality the minute they put on an American accent. See also: Jai Courtney.
Christ, Avatar would be twice as good with Damon in the lead. It would be twice as good with Dom DeLuis in the lead. It would be twice as good with Sean Spicer in the lead.
You kidding?Basically none of Avatar’s problems were with the cast. The story was just dull and basic and rote and predictable. Putting a better lead into the film would’ve been a minor bump in improvement, because the bones of the thing would be unchanged, and still shit.
Considering how the franchise was/is in production hell, it might have actually done more harm if he was constantly unavailable due to shoots that never see the light of day.We would not have “We Bought a Zoo”…
Or he might have done more good, depending on your point of view.
Well, he still has more money than he knows what to do with, plus his self respect, so that’s probably a win.
Sean Connery reportedly turned down both Gandalf AND Dumbledore so I think he had Damon beat.
And he was so salty he did this gem/turd:
While that is genuinely silly, The Avengers predates those other two roles by a couple years. Passing on those two lead him to do The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
League was an amusing timewaste of an action movie I thought; dumb and with little in the way of novelty or uniqueness in any particular way, but visually interesting, and with a story (such as it is! lol) moving along at a good clip, with few dull moments. I feel Wild Wild West is much in the same fashion; I liked that one also despite it being panned just about universally… lolNow, if you say Transformers (essentially ANY of them as they are all horrific) or G.I. Joe, I will react with rage and absolute contempt on the other hand. 😉 These movies have no redeeming qualities whatsoever!
While that is genuinely silly, The Avengers predates those other two roles by a couple years. Passing on those two lead him to do The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.Which in turn made him throw up his hands and say “Fuck it, I’m just never going to work again.”
The studio was so desperate to have Sean Connery attached (they needed a name to help secure this massive gamble) that they were willing to give up 15% of the profits – which, according to reports, meant he turned down around $450mTurning down LOTR and The Matrix because he didn’t understand the scripts – and then seeing what they became – is what led to him taking on League of Extraordinary Gentlemen as he was worried his inability to grasp the scripts were losing him great franchise roles… Makes sense he just gave up and quit after that film.
“I can’t comprehend these damn Lord of the Rings scripts! Sure its based on one of the most well-known works of fiction in the last century but I just don’t get it. Bring me something sensible like Zardoz!”Also, I don’t know if at the end he was losing it, needed money, or just wanted to help out the first Scottish CGI film, but he came out of retirement to star in this insane turd:
From what I read, it was Sean Connery wanting to help a Scottish production. If I remember correctly, the director said she almost fainted when she got this unexpected phone call about his wanting to take part.
Eh, it probably amounted to a couple of days of work in a booth, not exactly a herculean challenge.
Bring me something sensible like Zardoz!”To be fair, working on Zardoz probably seemed quite appealing to him.
I think he had Damon beat up.
Will Smith turned down The Matrix in favor of Wild Wild West.
“Think yah pretty smart, doncha, Black? What with yer muggle nose an yer greasy hair?!”
IIRC, and Damon might not have explained it properly, but if he was offered gross points, he is one of the first in line to get paid. (For example Jack Nicholson made over $50 million on Batman from his deal.) NET profits is where the screw jobs come in and usually end up amounting to practically pennies, if that. I believe Dave Prowse saw little from his Star Wars work because even Lucas was bad at accounting and claimed the OT movies lost money.
If I were David Prowse, I would have demanded one thing, his own personal duplicate of the Vader outfit he wore in each movie. (non-negotiable)
Useless trivia – David Prowse played the helper who assisted the disabled writer (whose wife was raped) in “A Clockwork Orange.” He looked a lot different without the helmet.
If I was Bryan Cranston I’d’ve demanded duplicate meth-cookin’ tighty-whities.
“Meth-Cookin’ Tighty-Whities” wasthe name of my ska band in college.
Or at the very LEAST, let him keep his saber and helmet.
I have a hard time believing a guy in a suit got points on a movie
I love hearing stories about how the english crew treated James Cameron like shit on the set of Aliens…like, when the stories that “nobody believed in this project” are actually true. I also remember nobody believing in him about Avatar, that he was just in the wild west in this warehouse making something nobody was ever going to see. I was around LA a lot at the time and there would be whispers that he was nuts and the movie would never come out. Sorta like now with the next four Avatars that nobody asked for. Suffice to say, to convince somebody to do a movie back in the 70s, even if we don’t really know who they are now, they’d often be offered points, and often even people we never heard of would say “I’m not doing that crap”…for example Alec Guinness famously thought Star Wars was dumb mumbo-jumbo
There’s a general rule in Hollywood: If you’re offered gross take it. If you’re offered net points say, fuck you, and demand a fixed payment. Only huge A-listers get offered gross anyway. Just never take a lower salary that’s supposedly offset by net points.
On a related note that’s more relevant to the readers of AV Club, never accept equity in exchange for a salary. For every startup that turned into Facebook, there are ten thousand that never made a dime – and even in the unlikely event that your company does hit it big in the IPO, there’s still a chance that executives and investors will screw over the rank and file.
there’s still a chance that executives and investors will screw over the rank and file.That chance, of course, being 100%, stories of “Microsoft millionaires” notwithstanding.
“but if he was offered gross points”
He wasn’t. He was offered 10% of PROFITS.
Can you read?
In the end, he’s still fabulously rich and famous. I don’t think he loses sleep.
I’m pretty sure Hollywood accounting would have whittled that amount down to nothing.
But on the otherhand he is not starting in dances with smurfs ( in space). So that is also a win.Because lets all be real. It looked awsome…and that was it. Story was drek. Just a cheap knock of version/combo of dances with wolves and ferngully ( or how ever that cartoon movie was called)
I really liked Fern Gully and Dances with Wolves, so I liked Avatar. But other than looking really cool in IMAX, it really wasn’t that great. I was 19 when it came out. I’m 31 now. I no longer care about a sequel.
I will never understand this. Avatar is the only movie that put me to sleep in the theater.
Willow for me, but that maybe because of the pot brownies I ate before hand.
Did the pot brownies make you think you saw Kevin Pollak as a tiny man who wanted to fuck a cat?
The brownies had nothing to do with it. Pollak IS a tiny man who wants to fuck a cat.
You must have seen a special screening of the director’s cut or something…
Stupid Daikini
Lmfao!!! It was really long….
I honestly wonder how many people have seen it recently? The hype was great, the 3D good, but beyond that one moment we all gathered around it, it has not held up well.Also Apollo 13 is what put me to sleep, but I was a kid and it was a long movie.
It was a big-budget action film that had themes that resonated strongly with a lot of people. It certainly hasn’t had a lasting impact, but it’s not even close to the worst film to get such a huge box office draw.
Yeah and the visuals were great, but it was as cookie cutter as they come as an action movie, and Sam Worthington is not a great actor by any means. I never saw it in theaters and finally saw it a few years back and was thoroughly underwhelmed by it. Outside of the visuals, there was nothing interesting about the movie
“Dances with Wolves” in space is what I thought.
Every 3d movie used to cause me to have a little nap. Nightmare Before Christmas, Beowulf, Avatar.
I fell asleep watching Angelina Jolie’s Tomb Raider. But I agree that Avatar is very world building, but not very story driven. Like there’s a story, but it seems like it was added because Cameron wanted to created this world.
it didn’t put me to sleep but those 3D glasses did kill my eyes. More importantly, in spite of all the hype, I didn’t really think about it once afterwards, and probably haven’t watched it once since then. The last Mad Max stayed with me longer afterwards than Avatar. That more Avatar movies got greenlit is solely a testament to Cameron’s clout in Hollywood and not much else.
“solely a testament to Cameron’s clout and not much else”? Glossing over the contradiction in your sentence, did you mi$$ everything this article was about?
That more Avatar films got greenlit is solely a testament to the obscene amount of money it made, and who gives a shit about its lasting cultural impact, blah, blah, blah because, again, money, and not much else.
I’d argue it’s a result of being the biggest movie in history ?
I know everyone think it’s weird, it was not that great, it is forgetable, bla bla bla… I’m in the same boat.
But it’s still the biggest movie in history. The only thing surprising about other movies being greenlit is how long it fuckin took.
it was the biggest movie in history *12 years ago*. It has since been pushed aside by Avengers, Endgame, 3+ Star Wars movies, etc. It would have made a ton more sense for him to shit out these sequels “while the iron was hot” but he chose to wait a while for some inexplicable reason. I think the *executives* involved in the decision-making process thought “oooh Avatar, big money-maker, another 2-3 will definitely do as well!” but I am skeptical. I had zero desire for another Avatar movie because those other movies at least had a little heart; Avatar is basically a chance for James Cameron to show everyone what a brilliant technical filmmaker he is and maybe give a few attendees seizures in the process.
Nope, still the biggest movie in history today, sorry. I do agree on it being weird they waited this long, which I mentioned in my comment, but yeah, the fact that a bunch of other movies were greenlit is easily explained by simple greed.
Ahhh, the transient genius of James Cameron. I finally saw “Titanic” last year (good think nobody spoiled the ending for me) and I gave it a D+ at most. Maybe even an “F.” I haven’t rewatched “Avatar” and don’t plan to do so but I’d wager that I find it pretty wanting, too.
He would have definitely improved that movie.
Poor guy, not only would he now be rich, but his career could have taken off like Sam Worthington’s.
Lmao
Someone pointed out to me that all these big sci-fi movies always have this deep and dedicated fandom except for Avatar. Like name some characters or draw some favorite costumes or describe a thrilling scene? I feel most sci-fi fans can’t. Its a totally forgettable action movie. Everyone went and saw it presumably based on hype and then promptly stopped caring about it. Then sci-fi fans just went “meh” at its world and characters. Its a single movie that made almost $3 BILLION dollars and barely anyone cosplays it or talks about it. Its just kinda incredible to me how well Cameron made this super bland thing but which was also financially successful.
If there is one truism in Hollywood, it’s that no matter how successful a film is, the studio will find a way to claim a loss so they can screw profit participants out of their cut. IIRC, even some of the Lord of the Rings participants had to sue for their earnings, because the studio was claiming they hadn’t really been profitable.
Net gross is different from net profit and the big guys get net gross deals. No way that Damon and his agency would have been hoodwinked by a net profit deal.
The other truism, courtesy Robert Evans: Nobody knows anything.
“Oh Matt, you should’ve said yes.”
Perhaps not such a loss. Remember, Fox still claim, according to their accounting, Alien never made any money. Ridley Scott jokes that why they keep on making sequels, to try to make back the money they lost on the first, and that he has far more watertight contracts on Prometheus and Covenant.
You know, I’ll take the Bourne movies over Avatar any day.
Well except Jason Bourne (the last film). They can keep that one.
Matt Damon was in Avatar?
Guess he just had to settle for the Bourne money. That’s rough, bro.
He seemed to do decent on that whole “Borne” things, so I am sure he will survive.
Going to go ahead and guess that he would not have $280 million from that.
Thanks to Hollywood Accounting, I’m guessing Avatar hasn’t actually made any profit on paper.
I’m sure Matt Damon has enough money already than adding so much more wouldn’t make that much of a difference. Unless he pulled a Johnny Depp and began a spending habit so outrageous it became destructive down the line…
Sam Worthington was offered 10% of the film’s cultural impact.
Whoops? How so? Matt Damon has been around the block. He knows if he took that percentage, “creative accounting” would have been thoroughly applied to reduce his payout to less than the fixed amount he agreed upon. Also, shame on you, for passing yourself off as an entertainment journalist when you think the profits are anywhere near the gross ticket sales figure you’re quoting. And to think, you were attempting to make a snide comment about passing that class you’ve obviously failed, “cinematic math”.
https://www.ted.com/profiles/28266504
https://www.imdb.com/user/ur132991274/?ref_=nv_usr_prof_2
https://www.bly.com/blog/general/why-i-answer-almost-every-query-i-get/?unapproved=1404438&moderation-hash=284f90abec80d10a17e55f58f6cbafb5#comment-1404438
https://www.bly.com/blog/general/why-i-answer-almost-every-query-i-get/#comment-1297228
https://www.bly.com/blog/general/why-i-answer-almost-every-query-i-get/#comment-1297227
https://telegra.ph/Subaru-SUV-for-Towing-in-2020-05-25
https://www.vingle.net/posts/3739474
https://www.hackathon.io/256449
…well, it would’ve earned him a good amount of money, but it wouldn’t be that much.Never, ever look for a percentage of the profits of a film. Only revenue. Even if that’s a much, much smaller share.A film only makes a profit if the accountants say it does. There’s all sorts of fees and expenses and drains and costs that can be piled onto a project in the books, particularly such a technical innovation-laden project such as Avatar was.He might’ve earned $28 Million when the accountants were done cooking the books, but he certainly wouldn’t have earned $280 million. That’s why you take a percentage of the revenue: All that matters how much it takes in, not how much the production claims to have spent.
The article says profit, but Matt Damon is only quoted as saying “10% of it.” I’m confident he knows the different between net and gross, even if the reporter doesn’t.
Looks like we all lost out there, Matt.
The costs associated with obtaining the Unobtanium needed to film the scenes with it would have meant Damon probably wouldn’t have made enough for a Avatar Happy Meal.
Yeah, but it was 10% of the net, not the gross, so by Hollywood math, he’d actually have owed 20th Century Fox money.
it does mean we get the ongoing paradox of the planet’s most successful movie starring a guy whose face we couldn’t pick out of a lineup to save our livesHahaha, true story: Just yesterday, I was visiting my brother-in-law, and they had the TV on in the background playing what I immediately recognized had to be Man on a Ledge even though I’d never watched the movie. The only thing I remembered from when the movie came out, other than the title, was thinking it had a big movie star in the title role but…huh. Yesterday, staring at his face, I could not remember who this guy was. Maybe he looked vaguely familiar, but…no. No name or other role he’d had came to mind. It was driving me crazy, so I had to look it up, and when I saw the name I realized—oh yeah. Back in 2012 I knew Sam Worthington was a big movie star, but 9 years later, that memory was wiped.
“recalling telling the same anecdote to his pal John Krasinski, who responded by noting that, “Nothing would be different in your life if you had done Avatar, except you and me would be having this conversation in space.” Says the guy that turned down Captain America, lol
Always ask for a piece of the Gross, the NET is Fantasy.
Ok, but is this BEFORE deductions? Because everyone in the biz knows movies never make any actual “profit.” Thanks to “Hollywood Accounting,” the original Star Wars (one of the highest grossing movies of all time) 40+ years on has yet to turn a true profit.
I guess in a world where money is the only thing that matters then this is a big deal. It’s not like he doesn’t have a boatload of money anyway…
10% of the profits wouldn’t be the same as 10% of the box office gross. That’s just bad math. Maybe he misses out on 70 million or so. Not that it isn’t a lot, but he already has nearly 200 million dollars. It’s not like anything in his life would change with that money. Also, he made 25+ million per Bourne movie after the first, which he may have not gotten otherwise. So he might have more now, anyway.
He would’ve been a hell of a lot better than Sam Worthington, who’s just sort of the guy you get if you want a boring military dude with no particular character beyond that.
“What’s 10 percent of $2.847 billion?”
What’s profit? Is it gross? No, it’s profit.
Kimmel just got months of new material for his show. Can’t wait for Damon to show up for a bit wearing blue face.
I saw Avatar for the first time a couple months ago and remember nothing about it
This is not an “oops” for him.He dodged a shitty role in a shitty movie.
Wealthy Celebrity Once Missed Out On Chance For Even More Money. Great story. Also, who gives a fuck.
This reminds me of Donald Sutherland not taking the gross on “Animal House” back in the ‘70s. For the two days of filming he did he just took $50K, rather than $35K + 15% gross because he figured the movie was going nowhere. He missed out on $20M from not taking the gross.
Not that much, since they’re pretty good at gaming the fees to reduce the profits. But probably “Robert Downey Jr from the first Avengers movie” money at least.
Would it have made $2,874,000,000 starring Matt Damon though?
“The largely unknown Worthington…”What?