$120M budget?

Here's what Nikki Finke says on her website:

Sony Pictures all week had been warning me about how little Jim Brooks' movies make. The problem is that none of his films have been this expensive. Brooks' highest grossing opening as a director was $12.6 million for As Good As It Gets, in part because Jack Nicholson was the lead. "We should come close to that, maybe a little less, and we expect a solid multiple," a Sony exec predicted. "We are in a season where these films leg out." Not this expensive flop. Tracking stayed awful right up until the movie opened Friday well behind Black Swan which was expanding into almost 1,000 screens this weekend and scoring twice How Do You Know's first-choice numbers for women. As for mutiples, they're dependent on good word of mouth which this bomb never had. Without that, anything less than $15M this weekend was a giant headache for Sony given what I'm told is How Do You Know's $120 million budget -- no kidding, and for a comedy -- while a weekend under $10M represented a $50 million writeoff for Sony. That's because Brooks kept to his usual long, long schedule, shooting a ton of footage, all while Jack Nicholson and Owen Wilson and Paul Rudd and Reese Witherspoon were getting paid full freight. Brooks wrote this pic for and around Witherspoon, then he indulged in uber-expensive reshoots as the studio and the writer/director tried to make Reese's unlikeable character more appealing. But Black Swan, in the words of one studio rival, was "a better alternative" at the box office for women. Ouch! Sony has had another great year at the domestic box office, but it'll try to sever its longtime connection with Jim Brooks after this.

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What did they spend the 120 million on for this film? Salaries? Cause unless there's a Deathstar, zombies on Mars, a quarter million Orcs, or flying cars--I don't get it.

I thought 100 mil was the average budget for a top-notch sci-fi flic. Tron probably cost less.

Who let's these executives keep making decisions like that?

I am a leaf on the wind - watch how I soar.

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I fully expect transforming robots and cgi dinosaurs when I go see this one next weekend... Looking at rom com budgets, it's really hard to fanthom how a movie that's not even set overseas or involve any kind of special effects would get that high of a budget... Brooks must have used some kind of special film stock that cost 1000 x more than the usual film.

Personally, I think the 7 million opening might have to do with the bland title and the uninspiring trailer... There's nothing catchy about it other than looking like a rom com where she has to chose between two guys. Too bad, though, despite the bashing Brooks is getting here as a filmmaker. As Good as it gets was a great movie. You're just a hater if you're going to try to claim that that was a piece of sh*t... so it's not your cup of tea...but that film has garned many awards and are on most lists of great films. Brooks is capable of great work with good characters....but I didn't know that he was this out of control with the budget. That's just crazy. Woody Allen could have made 40 movies with that budget. Maybe Brooks should buy Robert Ridguez lunch to pick his brain on how to save money on the budget.

The Budget doesn't Involve The Actors Salary, but seriously 120 million, I know Hollywood is sooooooooooooo damn Powerful but come on, it's a Rom com after all.

From Wikipedia:

The total production cost of the film was $120 million, with the net figure at about $100 million after tax rebates from Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia. The combined salaries for the director Brooks (about $10 million) and the four major stars Witherspoon ($15 million), Nicholson ($12 million), Wilson ($10 million) and Rudd ($3 million) totaled about $50 million. Brooks' "slow and meticulous" production and post-production also explained the size of the budget.



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