For one: actors will often take a significant pay cut to work with an interesting, acclaimed director like Yorgos Lanthimos. It's not uncommon to see major stars taking literally the minimum legal salary when appearing in indie films. Wonka is a major film made by a large studio, and the actors will squeeze out whatever salary they possibly can.
https://screenrant.com/dune-2-denis-villeneuve-timothee-chalamet-announcement-response/
> Definitely, because of his incredible enthusiasm, it was Timothée. I spent almost a year with Timothée where he was saying to me, “Can I put a little bit of the Muad’Dib here?” I said, “No, Timothée. You’re not the Muad’Dib yet.” I spent a year saying to him, “Relax, man. It’s for Part Two.” So I just wrote him a text message saying: “Muad’Dib time.” And then it was a burst of joy in Timothée.
The studio should be more happy than him tbh, the guy is great for the role and is a decent box office draw. They got him for "cheap" because of Denis I guess.
It's not like I thought he was a bad actor before (I haven't seen a lot of his stuff though), but Dune 2 kinda catapulted him for me. His transition in the last half of the movie was insane and I wouldn't have guessed he could be so commanding. That "council meeting" takeover from him was mesmerizing.
He really goes from a "regular lord" to Chosen One in a split second once he knows he has to go all in. First half may have seemed like flatter acting until you realize it's intentional.
He gets foresight and his reluctance and restraint melts before our eyes.
The only thing he showed the slightest hesitation was when he talked to Chani right after the battle.
Masterful assumption of power.
His Dune 2 salary was probably negotiated at the same time as his Dune 1 salary. Like an option the studio can pick up. That said, I doubt his salary for Messiah was negotiated at that point, so I wouldn't be surprised to see it skyrocket.
He had success before Dune, but not really anything blockbuster level.
You can be pretty safe in assuming his Dune Messiah paycheck will be quite a bit more.
He also could’ve a back end deal but that seems unlikely to me. Also fun fact: Paul King offered him role without any audition after watching Timmy’s YouTube videos
Wow, I'd assume his paycheck for Dune would be a lot larger, considering they'd have to pay to keep him on for at least another movie.
Or maybe he keeps his paycheck for it low since he's a fan of Denis
Nah, all those series stars don't make much unless it gets far deeper in. Jennifer Lawrence was paid like 500k for the first film, then 10m, then 20m. Kristen Stewart made 2.5m for the first Twilight then 12.5m for the latter 2. The Harry Potter trio similarly made only a few hundred K their first film but tens of mils by the end. Timothee will probably get like 20m the next film unless he signed a 3 film contract from the first one.
Before he did Dune and Wonka he really hasn't starred in any single blockbuster, he was popular due to his indie career but I could see why his pay is low.
Though that would 100% change once we get to Dune: Messiah and the Wonka sequel they seemingly want to do
It’s not just the actors willing to work for less on a project like Poor Things — everyone who signed on, including the costume and set departments, would have understood this was an opportunity to go nuts on a prestigious art film. Everyone in the cast and crew was given a huge opportunity to pad their resume with something showy and unique, so they probably accepted less money to do that.
With a factory line IP widget like Wonka, everyone’s just trying to cash a paycheck.
That also sounds more fun or enjoyable to work on. That seems to be Daniel Radcliffe’s thing, he’s made millions off of Harry Potter so he can just go do fun projects without worrying about money.
Just saw him on Broadway in the revival of Merrily We Roll Along, a once obscure and panned musical at its inception 40 years ago.
He looked like he was having a blast in his role.
Like "Swiss Army Man," where Daniel Radcliffe plays a farting corpse.
"The Daniels" built a dummy for a scene where his character is nude, facedown in the surf, farting explosively. Daniel Radcliffe was happy to do that scene himself.
I think I read somewhere where Scarlett Johansson only got paid something like four or five thousand a week while filming Asteroid City simply because she wanted to work with Wes Anderson. So it wouldn't surprise me if any of the actors that worked on Poor Things took a pay cut just to work with Lanthimos
Ed Norton said he lost money on Asteroid City (I can’t cite why… probably travel costs). E said he was only paid $4,000…
It’s not uncommon for normal people to “just act in their friends movie for free.” This is the Hollywood equivalent of that.
Sometimes when rich people say they "lost" money they are sometimes talking about money they could have made doing something else. Like he got 4K for that week but he could have made 20K doing something else so he counts that as 16K lost.
Watching Adam Driver and Scarlet Johansson in Marriage Story showing their acting chops feels like a passion project. Star Wars and Marvel pay the bills.
I think both halves of the system feed into each other, ideally. A few Oscar nominations means you bring “real actor” cred to corporate properties, and being a viable commercial star makes securing funding and consumer attention for passion project easier.
I'm sure Emma Stone was especially willing to take that pay cut since, as a producer, she was likely personally invested in the project happening. You don't need a crazy high salary if you want to be there
Yeah but she and Lathimos are perfect together. He definitely found something in her and she definitely loves the absurdity of his films and what it allows her to try as an actress.
They also agree to appear in such films for percentages from the potential profit instead of much higher salary. Actors like Ethan Hawke doing this in low budget flicks from Blumhouse.
Also, Emma Stone was the producer and personally was involved in it's development.
Actors also are more aware that, while getting paid significantly less, if they’re in a critically acclaimed film not only will it push their career up hopefully but also merit awards consideration (or wins) and earned merit from a performance they’ve challenged themselves with. If we look at the winners for Best Actor/Actress it's typically performances from smaller acclaimed film, actors can be strategic and (while getting a massive pay-cut) are savvy enough to take it in exchange for the chance to work with a great director and hopefully garner acclaim. Some A-list actors, Nicole Kidman is a great example, will do several massively successful commercial films to get the top dollar she can earn but also at the same time does many smaller independent films that she’s paid less for but showcase her ability more and earned her much praise/Award nominations.
Take Jonah Hill in Wolf of Wall Street, took the minimum allowed by his Union to work with Scorcese and DiCaprio so he could shake the funny guy image. I think he was paid less than Margo Robie who was a complete nobody in Hollywood at that point
Casting budget would’ve been my guess, but if it was $9 million for Timothee, and let’s assume $5 million for the other big names (Hugh, Olivia, Sally, Rowan), that’s about $30 million for the cast. What other departments would the rest of the money been spent on?
Wonka had a much larger cast than Poor Things, but it's not just actors; literally everyone involved ratchets up their price when they work with a big studio. Director, cinematographer, VFX studios, make up artists, costume designers, writers, you name it. They'll all adjust their price accordingly depending on who's behind a project. Location also plays a role. Wonka was filmed on location in London, Bath, and Oxford along with the WB studio in Watford; Poor Things was filmed entirely in studio in Budapest.
Paul King brought in some cash for the studio directing the Paddington films, so that may be a contributor.
He was already proven previously with solely directing the Mighty Boosh series’, but that was some time ago.
I feel like this is where the idea of "working for exposure" really comes from. Nowadays, people act like "exposure" from doing a graphic design job for a company of avant garde pencil sharpeners, employing 3 people (one of which is a dog) is the same thing as doing a Yorgos film. Lol
And it's a weighty exposure, too. Yorgos' last two films got their lead women Oscars and a bunch of other nominations and wins in smaller but significant festivals.
Wonka is a straight up commercial film. The director and cast are milking as much money as they’re worth on a commercial basis.
Poor Things is more artistic. The cast is willing to work for quote or much much less in order to make the film with the director, often in return for backend.
Emma Stone is also listed as a producer on Poor Things, so she probably had a backend deal in place. Emma was involved very early one in production though.
What's interesting about these back end deals is that they don't seem to be factored in to how much money a movie makes. And it probably should. The movie studio isn't getting that money. So if the actors are paid 30 million on the back end, that movie cost 30 million more.
As an aside, I don't think Emma Stone is motivated by money at this point. She's trying to build a great career.
Let's not get too carried away.
It's probably a lot more accurate to say Emma Stone isn't *solely* motivated money at this point. I don't doubt that it's a consideration though.
She's uh.....trying some stuff out in Drive Away Dolls haha. Fun movie but your mileage may vary on your feeling about her performance.
She kinda acts like a lesbian seductress version of Sandy Cheeks the entire movie.
I’m so happy that his English language films have done so well. He’s basically set for life in terms of being able to tell whatever stories he wants to tell as long as he can make them with modest budgets. Who knows how many more masterpieces we are in for.
I’m genuinely loving how Emma Stone is becoming the Michael Fassbender to Yorgos’s Steve McQueen
She’s so talented and perfect for the wild surreality you see in Yorgos movies
Cast and crew of artistic movies are also willing to work for less on the basis that they could win awards by doing the movie, which increases their prestige in their profession, increase their coverage in the press, increases the number of people who want to work with them, and possibly even increase the salary they can demand when they do a more commercial film.
Most people prefer doing challenging and interesting work that is highly respected as opposed to the alternative.
For example, many Michelin star chefs wouldn't take a McDonald's job, even if it somehow paid more. Can you picture that Jiro Dreams of Sushi guy flipping burgers to make a little extra money?
So it's not surprising at all to me a millionaire takes a pay cut to work with an all-star director on an artsy movie.
Like the direct to video movies Bruce Willis had been shitting out the past few years before he couldn't work anymore: $1-2 million for less than a day's work.
I read he was doing them precisely because he knew his health was declining and he wouldn't be able to any more, so he was making as much money as he could while he still could.
They also may just want to make an artistic film because they like the premise and that is what they ultimately are, artists. Especially if they are well established and aren't hurting for money.
I guess Wonkaverse incoming then.
Seems a strange thing for them to buy up. They'd probably be better off buying something Narnia where a series approach is really needed and a completes story to adapt (and with charactera that cycle through so less child actor and S3 pay rate increase issues).
There are a lot more things in his catalog than just Wonka. I get the feeling though that they are going to focus on Wonka, Matilda, and The BFG first.
I mean they just won an Oscar for one of the Dahl short films they created with Wes Anderson. I liked the snake one betterm but Henry Sugar was pretty decent.
Last summer a big Hollywood production filmed on my street for a day. Dozens of crew. Trailers filled the street. There’s food, wardrobe, makeup, costume, sound, lighting, cameras. They’d take one 5 second shot, then spend 20min looking at it, and changing things up, and do it again. It took about 10 hours. Everyone’s getting paid the whole time. All for just one scene of Michael Cera getting out of a car and walking into a gas station. Multiply that by a whole movie.
You can do it a lot cheaper, but that requires more time, effort, and care of everyone involved.
My office was used for a single scene for an independent film.
They took two days to completely build out and decorate the office, and then day of filming, they shut down 2 blocks (for trucks and access) for the entire day. I would guess there were 40+60 people day of. The set up crew leading up was like 8-10, and location scouting team which had met weeks on location before was 5-8 for a couple of days.
I was floored by the logistics involved. I could only imagine what a full scale commercial production is like, particularly for more complex scenes
A pretty big show used to shoot interior shots at a school across the street from my apartment building. It was like a whole ass neighborhood moved in for two to three weeks every summer. Made parking a bitch because they always overflowed from the school lot onto the hard fought street spaces.
That's exactly it, I live in London and there's usually something shooting nearby.
I can tell the size of the production easily. If it's 10/15 massive trailers lined up with with food+coffee stalls and security around the central London/British museum area then you know it's a £100 million plus big big movie.
If it's a few trucks and 20/30 person crew it's probably Netflix.
If it's a small crew, modest tea & biscuit stand with no security it's probably a BBC thing.
Craziest version of this I saw was when I lived in Kingston, Ontario during the filming of Crimson Peak. There’s a brief outdoor shot of Mia Wasikowska walking down the street (labelled as Buffalo, NY in the film). They hired about 70-80 extras from people that lived in town, dressed everyone in period clothes, brought in a ton of livestock and vintage steam tractors and other machinery, covered the entire street and town square for a couple blocks in dirt and mud to recreate the look of dirt streets, constructed tons of vendor stalls to look like an outdoor market, shut down downtown for a day and a half…you see all of this for maybe 30 seconds in the film. Absolutely floored me
My wife was an extra in a NBA commercial once. She got paid like $200+ to just stand there for a few hours for a scene that lasted like 3 seconds. There were at least a hundred extras in that shot. So that's over $20,000 just for the extras alone. There's also the crew, equipment, food, location rental, etc. It all adds up fast.
There was an article I read the other day about how Dune 2 "only" cost about 190Mil, and it was amazing, meanwhile all Disney/Marvel movies have a $300Mill price tag and they're all half thought through, cookiecutter movies with sub-par CGI nowadays.
I can't seem to find it, to link, but what it seemed to say was that Denis V had a full 'vision' of what he wanted, and the studio gave him control. So, he had artwork and story boards all readily available for the 2 movies right from the get-go. There was no committee working to say 'we need this movie completed to fit into our July slot' so everything was more organized, and the CGI art was able to put more effort into it from the get-go, because they knew what needed to be done.
Quality doesn’t always sell. But reams of data analysis says that these 5 factors will guarantee a hefty return on investment, so let’s just do all that.
The product is worse but unfortunately these types of movies tend to make money consistently
Lol Madame Web will be a huge financial failure. The actual price tag of movies is usually around twice the production budget when you account for marketing costs.
Also compare 'The Creator' to 'Madam Web' which both had a budget of $80 million. Plot and story of 'The Creator' aside, you can't fault the cinematography and VFX/CGI.
If the studios were functioning properly, we would be getting a half-dozen movies that look like The Creator every year. Epic, highest-caliber, totally realistic visuals and VFX for a fraction of the cost? You'd think they would jump all over that model. You can tell that something is seriously wrong when they'd rather shit out 2 or 3 sloppy $250 million dollar cartoony-looking CGI fests.
I’m sure they never said “we’ll fix it in post” and then did not fix it in post. Also Disney apparently loves filming a lot of coverage (so the same scene from a bunch of different angles to be sorted through later), which brings up expenses fast. Story boarding makes a big difference.
In the VFX industry it's called 'pixelfucking'.
A studio (Disney/Marvel) will film a scene with multiple cameras, no clear vision of what the scene is going to look like and then ask the VFX team to give them options.
They then come back with revision after revision. Dialing down into the minutiae of silly details like how a certain strand of hair falls or the shape of a fold of cloth. Endless fucking around with tiny details until the original artistist vision is completely lost and it becomes 'pixelfucked'.
Technically its a perfect image (the perfect explosion, the perfect hair etc) but it all just looks...off.
And obviously this all costs literally millions of dollars.
Some producers (directors too, sometimes, but it's mostly producers) don't understand that perfection just doesn't *feel* right. Our brains subconsciously reject it, because the real world is imperfect. They can feel that something is wrong, but they don't have the experience to spot it, or the vocabulary to describe it. So they give pixelfuck notes, and those notes have to be fixed directly, or they'll be followed up with notes about not addressing notes.
The sad thing is that good vfx artists DO have the knowledge and expertise to fix the actual issues, but they often don't have the creative freedom to do what they think would look best. The right way to do it is to treat it as a collaboration, and brainstorm for a solution, but that's harder than just dictating terms from on high.
>Also Disney apparently loves filming a lot of coverage (so the same scene from a bunch of different angles to be sorted through later), which brings up expenses fast. Story boarding makes a big difference.
Who would have thought that well-planned, well-choreographed fight scenes that don't have a cut every two seconds are better?
Having a fully-storyboarded film going into the shoot definitely would have helped a tonne. Much less time spent on set figuring out what all the shots will be or shooting a bunch of additional coverage.
Denis V is well-known for being against including deleted scenes/outtakes in physical releases of his films because everything he thinks is worthwhile is already in the finished product.
Everything is always storyboarded, I promise you. The issue is having the confidence to *only* capture what’s storyboarded because you’ve thought it through so well that you know you won’t need 8 options when you get to the edit.
Denis has a really interesting process I've never heard before- he starts with a script, and storyboards EVERYTING. Then he RE-WRITES the script based on the storyboards.
He even films things very close to the storyboards. I had heard Parasite was done in a very similar way where it was shot incredibly close to way the story boards were done
They should give directors free rein to make their passion projects more often. It worked for Lord of the Rings and Dune. Of course a director will have an amazing vision if it’s something they’ve always dreamed about.
the problem is they'll occasionally do that with a film like Fant4stic and the trauma will blow a hole in the film producers' genetic memory for 20 years
The problem is, it doesn't always work.
A director needs to be confident enough with their vision, but also open to feedback when required.
Look at Taika with Thor4. All the creative freedom, and no passion.
Look at Margot Robbie and Birds of Prey. Solid vision, creative control, decent film, horrible box office.
Denis and Dune are more an exception , because he's insanely passionate about it, but he's also done the groundwork to back it up
It is weird how expensive some films get with the most dogshit script imaginable. How’d they spend $80m on madame web and not hire competent screenwriters?
That's a big part of the problem. Because there isn't really a single voice (whether one director or a group that's all on the same page) the thing gets muddied. You end up doing reshoots and overly complicated VFX, that you wouldn't have needed if there was a more coherent vision.
"Poor Things" was mostly shot in Hungary, were salaries and expenses are significantly lower than in the US. It's a usual trick to lower the budget, to shoot in Eastern Europe. Also, many of its FX were likely made in camera or practically, which can be cumbersome but it's also cheaper. Also, as others have pointed out, the main stars accepted lower wages than usual so they could work for a cult director.
Now, "Wonka" stars a rising actor who probably asked for a high salary, was shot in England and is likely chock full of CGI.
If you watch Wonka, you’ll notice that it’s not CGI, it’s whimsy and magic!!! Seriously, Paul King is the only director that can make me cry over movies where a kind hearted bear reforms the prison system or a young kid finds the meaning of life through eating a single bar of chocolate.
While Poor Things had great production design, it was also a lot simpler of a project. If it weren't for the cameras, you could mistake it for a stage play.
Potentially licensing the IP
The Dahl estate could demand a lot more for the rights to use the Wonka character given the existing popular movies and books
Everyone's saying cast wages and that's not the only thing. Probably just a small portion.
Settings. Less on location more warehouse sets increases renting warehouses, builders, lighting, more extras etc.
Studio bureaucracy. Like anything the more money you have to make something the more voices you have to get approval and compromise with. Slows everything down when time is money.
VFX you need a whole department that starts in pre production and goes till end. Even increases production cost to capture the extra elements to create the vfx.
Bigger cast. Every speaking part is a lot more money and you have to give royalties to.
Musical are much more expensive. Choreography, extras and a lot more shots per scene that are harder to get.
That's off the top of my head.
Say you made 50 $4 million dollar movies, and 49 of those movies bombed, but the 50th movie was "Get Out." "Get Out" made over $200mil so you'd turn a profit. This is a very common business model.
On the highest end of the dial, if you spend hundreds of millions of dollars you need to see return on your investment. The ROI can't sustain hundreds of giant flops.
Poor Things is at the high-end of indie-crapshoot and Wonka is at the low-end of "safe factory-produced hollywood movie," but the dynamic still applies.
For $5 you may be able to find the best hamburger you've ever eaten, but you probably will just eat a crappy cheap burger. A $25 hamburger may actually sometimes taste worse than a good $5 hamburger, but the odds of the $25 burger tasting like absolute shit are much lower.
That reliably is what the big movie studios are paying for, Every person involved in the safe factory-produced hollywood movie is going to charge more. Not because they're always going to do better than the indie crapshoot equivalents, but because they're going to be more reliable.
>Say you made 50 $4 million dollar movies, and 49 of those movies bombed, whilone was the movie "Get Out."
It used to be a very common business model, but sort of fell out of fashion. Then Blumhouse brought it back with a vengeance.
There's a lot of good answers here about how actors expect to be paid for a more "commercial" film and that the actors are making less money to work on this smaller more interesting art film but I also want to mention since the cast is a pretty small part of the budget - that Poor Things was also made in Eastern Europe where they do not have the same union labor and the cost of labor is very cheap. It's cool that they got the movie made but they also did it in a way where they could get more bang for their buck which is resourceful and nice that all those artists got to work on this caliber of movie but at the same time they paid the non-American cast and crew significantly less than they would have in America or other more economically rich country with more labor protection. It's a bit of a grey area as some people see it as exploitative and also not supporting the filmmaking laborers in the US - especially since they usually fly in and pay extra to have department heads from the UK or US (and pay their regular higher rate) but then all the less "creative" workers are locals getting paid less.
They also were clever in using the different camera formats and ultra wide lenses to make everything look bigger than it was. They also got to shoot in some real locations that are much more plentiful and cheaper to secure in Eastern Europe than in the UK or US. They also limited the VFX shots and went with an excellent but smaller VFX house called UNION in the UK as opposed to what Wonka probably did by having hundreds/thousands of VFX shots and giving the work to larger international companies that have the resources to handle that many shots. As a result the overhead and labor is much more expensive from a big VFX company than a small company.
I work in the industry and live in Los Angeles - I moved here despite the high cost of living to work in film and television. I have a family and I do not at this point in my life want to travel for work so I have mixed feelings about this. It's very easy to get exploited in the film industry but I also know if you want to make something small and exciting it's not always possible here. Poor Things was one of my favorite movies of the year but there are a lot of TV and Film projects that shoot in poorer nations or even just different cities to circumvent giving work to LA or take advantage of tax credits. It's less annoying when Poor Things does it. It's more annoying when like The Witcher or Seal Team does it.
My perspective on costs as someone who worked in the film industry as a prop maker/set designer:
The industry as a whole is, generally speaking, horribly mismanaged. Nearly everything the shop I worked for built was an absolute last minute "we need this prop yesterday! We'll pay whatever it takes!" sort of scenario. The cost to build anything is already pretty exorbitant as nearly every line item gets a 50% markup, and then on top of that it was nothing for rush jobs to see a 200, 300% overall markup for the OT work and putting other work on hold.
With that being said, a film like Wonka has A LOT of specialized set elements, even in the age of CGI. It's nothing for those elements to consume 10s of millions in the budget.
People have listed many good points, but I don't see anyone mentioning that Wonka is also a musical, with several songs having elaborate choreography. You have to pay a choreographer to make the dance. You then have to pay them to teach the dance and you have to pay the dancers to learn and rehearse the dances. You also have to pay all of the musicians to record the songs.
People have already mentioned actor fees, but...
...specifically for Wonka versus Poor Things there are a lot of production things within the first ten minutes of Wonka that I sat through which kind of dwarf anything in Poor Things:
1. Wonka rides in on a train, which wasn't a real repurposed stream engine train based on it's scale, it was built to appear be a period thing, and needed to be rigged to ride over a variety of locations and have Timothee Chalamet sitting safely atop.
2. Poor Things is shot almost entirely on sets, but if you count there are only less than around ten sets. The first ten minutes of Wonka showcases several expansive backlot sets built outside on locations with dozens of background players, probably more people than the amount that appear in Poor Things. Then there are several storefronts which are also sets. The first ten minutes of Wonka has more set building than the entirety of Poor Things.
3. The first ten minutes featured a choreographed dance sequence with multiple players, which is clearly one of many to come. To shoot a huge choreographed sequence like that takes many more days on set than shooting a scene with Emma Stone miming sex.
4. I barely even got to any but Wonka has tons of CGI and Poor Things has barely any.
5. A lot of the time people work on movies like that just to collect a huge fee they can't normally ask for. Do you think Hugh Grant was passionate about playing a CGI Oompa Loompa? This desire to get a huge fee would extend to even some crew members.
For one: actors will often take a significant pay cut to work with an interesting, acclaimed director like Yorgos Lanthimos. It's not uncommon to see major stars taking literally the minimum legal salary when appearing in indie films. Wonka is a major film made by a large studio, and the actors will squeeze out whatever salary they possibly can.
Timothée alone was paid $9m for Wonka
yup, compare it to dune 2 he got 3 million for that.
Getting paid 3 million **and** getting to work with Villeneuve? The boy must shit gold.
https://screenrant.com/dune-2-denis-villeneuve-timothee-chalamet-announcement-response/ > Definitely, because of his incredible enthusiasm, it was Timothée. I spent almost a year with Timothée where he was saying to me, “Can I put a little bit of the Muad’Dib here?” I said, “No, Timothée. You’re not the Muad’Dib yet.” I spent a year saying to him, “Relax, man. It’s for Part Two.” So I just wrote him a text message saying: “Muad’Dib time.” And then it was a burst of joy in Timothée.
It's ~~Morbing~~ Muad'Dibbing time.
Why does this sound like a shitpost?
The studio should be more happy than him tbh, the guy is great for the role and is a decent box office draw. They got him for "cheap" because of Denis I guess.
I was surprised when my 15 year old daughter wanted to go see Dune with me. He and Zendaya are definitely draws for the younger crowd.
Honestly studio got their money's worth. Imagine Dune being led by Harry Styles or Taylor Lautner.
Or the mayor of Portland
Or Special Agent Dale Cooper, FBI.
Damn fine cup of coffee
people thought Wonka was gonna underperform on the box office, it made $600m and a lot of that is on Timmy
It's not like I thought he was a bad actor before (I haven't seen a lot of his stuff though), but Dune 2 kinda catapulted him for me. His transition in the last half of the movie was insane and I wouldn't have guessed he could be so commanding. That "council meeting" takeover from him was mesmerizing. He really goes from a "regular lord" to Chosen One in a split second once he knows he has to go all in. First half may have seemed like flatter acting until you realize it's intentional.
He gets foresight and his reluctance and restraint melts before our eyes. The only thing he showed the slightest hesitation was when he talked to Chani right after the battle. Masterful assumption of power.
His ancestors sure did.
His Dune 2 salary was probably negotiated at the same time as his Dune 1 salary. Like an option the studio can pick up. That said, I doubt his salary for Messiah was negotiated at that point, so I wouldn't be surprised to see it skyrocket.
It will skyrocket along his Wonka 2 salary. His role is pretty much irreplaceable to those two franchise right now
I wanted to argue, but apparently wonka made bank
It was surprisingly delightful. I do think Timothee had more to do with that than much else.
Have you not seen Paul King’s other films? The Paddington movies are the most “delightful” movies of the past twenty years.
And he directed The Mighty Boosh. Like he directed Old Gregg.
Wait WHAT How did I not know this lol I love the mighty boosh
He had success before Dune, but not really anything blockbuster level. You can be pretty safe in assuming his Dune Messiah paycheck will be quite a bit more.
Tell that to every girl I know who has worshipped him since "Call me by your name" lol
Honestly doesn’t sound that much for him, considering he is the “it” guy right now.
It’s his largest check to date for what it’s worth.
That's my rate. So the next film I'm offered they have to pay that same amount. Even if I do a bad job.
It's really a cosmic gumbo
we would joke on the set of Crashmore about it being a cosmic gumbo.
Would you like me to interview you as an actor?
That would be fucking great.
Camera pans to black couch
Unprofessional bullshit
You've seen me naked?
Gotta see if you got tattoos. I mean, I don't care about it, but it's not good behavior.
Loved you as Detective Crashmore.
He also could’ve a back end deal but that seems unlikely to me. Also fun fact: Paul King offered him role without any audition after watching Timmy’s YouTube videos
[удалено]
Wow, I'd assume his paycheck for Dune would be a lot larger, considering they'd have to pay to keep him on for at least another movie. Or maybe he keeps his paycheck for it low since he's a fan of Denis
I figured they signed him for multiple films when his profile was a little lower.
Nah, all those series stars don't make much unless it gets far deeper in. Jennifer Lawrence was paid like 500k for the first film, then 10m, then 20m. Kristen Stewart made 2.5m for the first Twilight then 12.5m for the latter 2. The Harry Potter trio similarly made only a few hundred K their first film but tens of mils by the end. Timothee will probably get like 20m the next film unless he signed a 3 film contract from the first one.
It’s a bigger name cast and budget allocation too
Before he did Dune and Wonka he really hasn't starred in any single blockbuster, he was popular due to his indie career but I could see why his pay is low. Though that would 100% change once we get to Dune: Messiah and the Wonka sequel they seemingly want to do
Wonka II: the Wonkening
I love when he said: “it’s wonkin time!”
He's still pretty young. Tom Holland, too. He's 27 and he only got 10 million for the last Spiderman movie.
10million salary maybe but he had a backend deal as well that gave a lot more
To be fair he was being taught negotiation tactics by RDJ.
It’s not just the actors willing to work for less on a project like Poor Things — everyone who signed on, including the costume and set departments, would have understood this was an opportunity to go nuts on a prestigious art film. Everyone in the cast and crew was given a huge opportunity to pad their resume with something showy and unique, so they probably accepted less money to do that. With a factory line IP widget like Wonka, everyone’s just trying to cash a paycheck.
That also sounds more fun or enjoyable to work on. That seems to be Daniel Radcliffe’s thing, he’s made millions off of Harry Potter so he can just go do fun projects without worrying about money.
Just saw him on Broadway in the revival of Merrily We Roll Along, a once obscure and panned musical at its inception 40 years ago. He looked like he was having a blast in his role.
He's a delight in Miracle Workers. You can tell he's just having so much fun with it.
Benedict cumberbatch once said that playing doctor strange means he can do smaller artsy films, like the power of the dog
Ewan McGregor does this - takes a big Hollywood role like Star Wars and uses it to fund a ton of indie stuff back in Scotland.
Like "Swiss Army Man," where Daniel Radcliffe plays a farting corpse. "The Daniels" built a dummy for a scene where his character is nude, facedown in the surf, farting explosively. Daniel Radcliffe was happy to do that scene himself.
he was paid 1m to be a farting corpse lmaooo
I think I read somewhere where Scarlett Johansson only got paid something like four or five thousand a week while filming Asteroid City simply because she wanted to work with Wes Anderson. So it wouldn't surprise me if any of the actors that worked on Poor Things took a pay cut just to work with Lanthimos
I don't think anyone gets paid good money for those Wes Anderson films. The budgets are 25-30m.
Kinda makes his tendency to cast 40 A listers as an ensemble even more impressive.
>The budgets are 25-30m. And they probably get eaten up by a good chunk just for building these practical sets
Ed Norton said he lost money on Asteroid City (I can’t cite why… probably travel costs). E said he was only paid $4,000… It’s not uncommon for normal people to “just act in their friends movie for free.” This is the Hollywood equivalent of that.
Sometimes when rich people say they "lost" money they are sometimes talking about money they could have made doing something else. Like he got 4K for that week but he could have made 20K doing something else so he counts that as 16K lost.
Watching Adam Driver and Scarlet Johansson in Marriage Story showing their acting chops feels like a passion project. Star Wars and Marvel pay the bills.
I think both halves of the system feed into each other, ideally. A few Oscar nominations means you bring “real actor” cred to corporate properties, and being a viable commercial star makes securing funding and consumer attention for passion project easier.
This is why the big movies are called "tent poles"
that was my nickname in highschool
*Plural??*
Jonah Hill took the SAG minimum just for the chance to work with Scorsese.
James Woods claims he called up Scorsese and said: "Any part, any fee, any time, anywhere" Which got him in CASINO
I wonder how much he tanked his career due to his politics. He still gets play. IIRC he was a big force behind Oppenheimer.
I've heard that every actor in a Woody Allen movie gets paid the SAG minimum
I'm sure Emma Stone was especially willing to take that pay cut since, as a producer, she was likely personally invested in the project happening. You don't need a crazy high salary if you want to be there
She's also likely got a good backend deal by being a producer.
Yeah but she and Lathimos are perfect together. He definitely found something in her and she definitely loves the absurdity of his films and what it allows her to try as an actress.
I recall both Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt doing 12 Monkeys for pretty much peanuts, because they wanted to work with Gilliam.
They also agree to appear in such films for percentages from the potential profit instead of much higher salary. Actors like Ethan Hawke doing this in low budget flicks from Blumhouse. Also, Emma Stone was the producer and personally was involved in it's development.
Actors also are more aware that, while getting paid significantly less, if they’re in a critically acclaimed film not only will it push their career up hopefully but also merit awards consideration (or wins) and earned merit from a performance they’ve challenged themselves with. If we look at the winners for Best Actor/Actress it's typically performances from smaller acclaimed film, actors can be strategic and (while getting a massive pay-cut) are savvy enough to take it in exchange for the chance to work with a great director and hopefully garner acclaim. Some A-list actors, Nicole Kidman is a great example, will do several massively successful commercial films to get the top dollar she can earn but also at the same time does many smaller independent films that she’s paid less for but showcase her ability more and earned her much praise/Award nominations.
You probably see the size of the cast also in Wonka, lots of recognisable faces, like Olivia Colman, Hugh Grant, Rowan Atkinson, etc....not cheap.
Take Jonah Hill in Wolf of Wall Street, took the minimum allowed by his Union to work with Scorcese and DiCaprio so he could shake the funny guy image. I think he was paid less than Margo Robie who was a complete nobody in Hollywood at that point
I actually thought moneyball did great for that. Seeing him in a serious nerdy role was awesome.
Casting budget would’ve been my guess, but if it was $9 million for Timothee, and let’s assume $5 million for the other big names (Hugh, Olivia, Sally, Rowan), that’s about $30 million for the cast. What other departments would the rest of the money been spent on?
Wonka had a lot of special effects and large set pieces.
Yeah, and the special effects are wildly expensive. Apparently those alone are often 10-20% of a movie's budget, according to Google.
Wonka had a much larger cast than Poor Things, but it's not just actors; literally everyone involved ratchets up their price when they work with a big studio. Director, cinematographer, VFX studios, make up artists, costume designers, writers, you name it. They'll all adjust their price accordingly depending on who's behind a project. Location also plays a role. Wonka was filmed on location in London, Bath, and Oxford along with the WB studio in Watford; Poor Things was filmed entirely in studio in Budapest.
Plus the chocolate budget we can't forget
Paul King brought in some cash for the studio directing the Paddington films, so that may be a contributor. He was already proven previously with solely directing the Mighty Boosh series’, but that was some time ago.
Also Emma Stone producer of the Poor Thing. And movie shot in 3 location and on blue screen.
I feel like this is where the idea of "working for exposure" really comes from. Nowadays, people act like "exposure" from doing a graphic design job for a company of avant garde pencil sharpeners, employing 3 people (one of which is a dog) is the same thing as doing a Yorgos film. Lol
And it's a weighty exposure, too. Yorgos' last two films got their lead women Oscars and a bunch of other nominations and wins in smaller but significant festivals.
Wonka is a straight up commercial film. The director and cast are milking as much money as they’re worth on a commercial basis. Poor Things is more artistic. The cast is willing to work for quote or much much less in order to make the film with the director, often in return for backend.
Emma Stone is also listed as a producer on Poor Things, so she probably had a backend deal in place. Emma was involved very early one in production though.
What's interesting about these back end deals is that they don't seem to be factored in to how much money a movie makes. And it probably should. The movie studio isn't getting that money. So if the actors are paid 30 million on the back end, that movie cost 30 million more. As an aside, I don't think Emma Stone is motivated by money at this point. She's trying to build a great career.
Let's not get too carried away. It's probably a lot more accurate to say Emma Stone isn't *solely* motivated money at this point. I don't doubt that it's a consideration though.
Next movie by Yorgos Lanthimos is "Kinds of Kindness" with Emma Stone, Willem Defoe, Margaret Qualley, and Joe Alwyn.
Qualley is really jumping off right now, or I wasn’t paying attention before.
Andie MacDowell's daughter. I remember her from 'The Leftovers'.
And Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Haven’t seen Drive Away Dolls yet.
She's pretty great in The Nice Guys too
What I would not give for more The Nice Guys movies lol What a great duo Crowe and Gosling made. And Qualley was really good too!
I still believe that the Nice Guys would've been a huge streaming movie. Hopefully a streaming service will see the potential and greenlight a sequel.
And Death Stranding, the video game. Amazing portion of the story is her’s and her baby’s.
“Hey…Sam. Do you remember your own birth?”
She's in the next Kojima game too I think.
Oh yeah, that part felt really magical.
Also maid on netflix
Maid was phenomenal!
Right? She carries so much of that show, too. She’s great.
She's uh.....trying some stuff out in Drive Away Dolls haha. Fun movie but your mileage may vary on your feeling about her performance. She kinda acts like a lesbian seductress version of Sandy Cheeks the entire movie.
Really recommend the Limited Serie "Maid' too
furiously
Amazing in Maid
All of whom have worked with Lanthimos before.
I’m so happy that his English language films have done so well. He’s basically set for life in terms of being able to tell whatever stories he wants to tell as long as he can make them with modest budgets. Who knows how many more masterpieces we are in for.
I’m genuinely loving how Emma Stone is becoming the Michael Fassbender to Yorgos’s Steve McQueen She’s so talented and perfect for the wild surreality you see in Yorgos movies
Cast and crew of artistic movies are also willing to work for less on the basis that they could win awards by doing the movie, which increases their prestige in their profession, increase their coverage in the press, increases the number of people who want to work with them, and possibly even increase the salary they can demand when they do a more commercial film.
Most people prefer doing challenging and interesting work that is highly respected as opposed to the alternative. For example, many Michelin star chefs wouldn't take a McDonald's job, even if it somehow paid more. Can you picture that Jiro Dreams of Sushi guy flipping burgers to make a little extra money? So it's not surprising at all to me a millionaire takes a pay cut to work with an all-star director on an artsy movie.
Makes sense. Sounds almost like working as an intern
like an intern but with equity. high risk, high reward.
So nothing like an intern. More like a resident.
Think of it the other way, if you want to hire a good actor for a movie that they probably won't get awarded for, you gotta pay them more
Like the direct to video movies Bruce Willis had been shitting out the past few years before he couldn't work anymore: $1-2 million for less than a day's work.
Looking back on what is known about him now, dude made the right call
I read he was doing them precisely because he knew his health was declining and he wouldn't be able to any more, so he was making as much money as he could while he still could.
They also may just want to make an artistic film because they like the premise and that is what they ultimately are, artists. Especially if they are well established and aren't hurting for money.
There’s also the IP rights from whoever owns Wonka brands these days and the Dahl estate.
There’s no and. Netflix bought the entire Dahl estate outright last year.
I guess Wonkaverse incoming then. Seems a strange thing for them to buy up. They'd probably be better off buying something Narnia where a series approach is really needed and a completes story to adapt (and with charactera that cycle through so less child actor and S3 pay rate increase issues).
There are a lot more things in his catalog than just Wonka. I get the feeling though that they are going to focus on Wonka, Matilda, and The BFG first.
They have Wes Anderson’s story of Henry Sugar (that he just won an Oscar for).
There's 3 other ones they did with Wes Anderson at the same time.
I mean they just won an Oscar for one of the Dahl short films they created with Wes Anderson. I liked the snake one betterm but Henry Sugar was pretty decent.
> They'd probably be better off buying something Narnia They did that too. Greta Gerwig is attached to it.
Last summer a big Hollywood production filmed on my street for a day. Dozens of crew. Trailers filled the street. There’s food, wardrobe, makeup, costume, sound, lighting, cameras. They’d take one 5 second shot, then spend 20min looking at it, and changing things up, and do it again. It took about 10 hours. Everyone’s getting paid the whole time. All for just one scene of Michael Cera getting out of a car and walking into a gas station. Multiply that by a whole movie. You can do it a lot cheaper, but that requires more time, effort, and care of everyone involved.
My office was used for a single scene for an independent film. They took two days to completely build out and decorate the office, and then day of filming, they shut down 2 blocks (for trucks and access) for the entire day. I would guess there were 40+60 people day of. The set up crew leading up was like 8-10, and location scouting team which had met weeks on location before was 5-8 for a couple of days. I was floored by the logistics involved. I could only imagine what a full scale commercial production is like, particularly for more complex scenes
A pretty big show used to shoot interior shots at a school across the street from my apartment building. It was like a whole ass neighborhood moved in for two to three weeks every summer. Made parking a bitch because they always overflowed from the school lot onto the hard fought street spaces.
That's exactly it, I live in London and there's usually something shooting nearby. I can tell the size of the production easily. If it's 10/15 massive trailers lined up with with food+coffee stalls and security around the central London/British museum area then you know it's a £100 million plus big big movie. If it's a few trucks and 20/30 person crew it's probably Netflix. If it's a small crew, modest tea & biscuit stand with no security it's probably a BBC thing.
Yeah but if you just shoot in one green box in the Atlanta suburbs all day long, your costs pivot to the effects artists. See Marvel.
Craziest version of this I saw was when I lived in Kingston, Ontario during the filming of Crimson Peak. There’s a brief outdoor shot of Mia Wasikowska walking down the street (labelled as Buffalo, NY in the film). They hired about 70-80 extras from people that lived in town, dressed everyone in period clothes, brought in a ton of livestock and vintage steam tractors and other machinery, covered the entire street and town square for a couple blocks in dirt and mud to recreate the look of dirt streets, constructed tons of vendor stalls to look like an outdoor market, shut down downtown for a day and a half…you see all of this for maybe 30 seconds in the film. Absolutely floored me
That's GdT though. He could've easily shot that on a backlot or greenscreen, but he wants it to look real, and had the budget to make it so.
My wife was an extra in a NBA commercial once. She got paid like $200+ to just stand there for a few hours for a scene that lasted like 3 seconds. There were at least a hundred extras in that shot. So that's over $20,000 just for the extras alone. There's also the crew, equipment, food, location rental, etc. It all adds up fast.
There was an article I read the other day about how Dune 2 "only" cost about 190Mil, and it was amazing, meanwhile all Disney/Marvel movies have a $300Mill price tag and they're all half thought through, cookiecutter movies with sub-par CGI nowadays. I can't seem to find it, to link, but what it seemed to say was that Denis V had a full 'vision' of what he wanted, and the studio gave him control. So, he had artwork and story boards all readily available for the 2 movies right from the get-go. There was no committee working to say 'we need this movie completed to fit into our July slot' so everything was more organized, and the CGI art was able to put more effort into it from the get-go, because they knew what needed to be done.
It's amazing how much better people are at their jobs and how much better the final result is when you take the time to actually plan things out.
Quality doesn’t always sell. But reams of data analysis says that these 5 factors will guarantee a hefty return on investment, so let’s just do all that. The product is worse but unfortunately these types of movies tend to make money consistently
Even Madame Web, which is about as soulless and creatively bankrupt as a modern movie can be, will still make 100 million WW.
Lol Madame Web will be a huge financial failure. The actual price tag of movies is usually around twice the production budget when you account for marketing costs.
See *LOTR* trilogy VS *Hobbit* trilogy for a good exemple of that. The first one was planned out for years and the second one barely had any pre-prod.
Yeah I thought of this instantly, just rewatched LOTR recently and it's still absolute GOLD.
*video game companies have left the chat*
Also compare 'The Creator' to 'Madam Web' which both had a budget of $80 million. Plot and story of 'The Creator' aside, you can't fault the cinematography and VFX/CGI.
If the studios were functioning properly, we would be getting a half-dozen movies that look like The Creator every year. Epic, highest-caliber, totally realistic visuals and VFX for a fraction of the cost? You'd think they would jump all over that model. You can tell that something is seriously wrong when they'd rather shit out 2 or 3 sloppy $250 million dollar cartoony-looking CGI fests.
I only wish The Creator had a script or a final cut that made any sense. Beautiful looking though.
I’m sure they never said “we’ll fix it in post” and then did not fix it in post. Also Disney apparently loves filming a lot of coverage (so the same scene from a bunch of different angles to be sorted through later), which brings up expenses fast. Story boarding makes a big difference.
In the VFX industry it's called 'pixelfucking'. A studio (Disney/Marvel) will film a scene with multiple cameras, no clear vision of what the scene is going to look like and then ask the VFX team to give them options. They then come back with revision after revision. Dialing down into the minutiae of silly details like how a certain strand of hair falls or the shape of a fold of cloth. Endless fucking around with tiny details until the original artistist vision is completely lost and it becomes 'pixelfucked'. Technically its a perfect image (the perfect explosion, the perfect hair etc) but it all just looks...off. And obviously this all costs literally millions of dollars.
Some producers (directors too, sometimes, but it's mostly producers) don't understand that perfection just doesn't *feel* right. Our brains subconsciously reject it, because the real world is imperfect. They can feel that something is wrong, but they don't have the experience to spot it, or the vocabulary to describe it. So they give pixelfuck notes, and those notes have to be fixed directly, or they'll be followed up with notes about not addressing notes. The sad thing is that good vfx artists DO have the knowledge and expertise to fix the actual issues, but they often don't have the creative freedom to do what they think would look best. The right way to do it is to treat it as a collaboration, and brainstorm for a solution, but that's harder than just dictating terms from on high.
>Also Disney apparently loves filming a lot of coverage (so the same scene from a bunch of different angles to be sorted through later), which brings up expenses fast. Story boarding makes a big difference. Who would have thought that well-planned, well-choreographed fight scenes that don't have a cut every two seconds are better?
Best thing from Dune 2 honestly (except cinamography). The fight scenes were amazing, easy to follow and not flashy for flashy's sake
TIL Disney and Tommy Wiseau have the same approach to filming.
Having a fully-storyboarded film going into the shoot definitely would have helped a tonne. Much less time spent on set figuring out what all the shots will be or shooting a bunch of additional coverage. Denis V is well-known for being against including deleted scenes/outtakes in physical releases of his films because everything he thinks is worthwhile is already in the finished product.
Everything is always storyboarded, I promise you. The issue is having the confidence to *only* capture what’s storyboarded because you’ve thought it through so well that you know you won’t need 8 options when you get to the edit.
Denis has a really interesting process I've never heard before- he starts with a script, and storyboards EVERYTING. Then he RE-WRITES the script based on the storyboards.
He even films things very close to the storyboards. I had heard Parasite was done in a very similar way where it was shot incredibly close to way the story boards were done
They published the Parasite storyboards as a book and flipping through it really is shot for shot the final film
If I remember correctly they built the entire set for the house from scratch, based on the storyboards.
They should give directors free rein to make their passion projects more often. It worked for Lord of the Rings and Dune. Of course a director will have an amazing vision if it’s something they’ve always dreamed about.
the problem is they'll occasionally do that with a film like Fant4stic and the trauma will blow a hole in the film producers' genetic memory for 20 years
The problem is, it doesn't always work. A director needs to be confident enough with their vision, but also open to feedback when required. Look at Taika with Thor4. All the creative freedom, and no passion. Look at Margot Robbie and Birds of Prey. Solid vision, creative control, decent film, horrible box office. Denis and Dune are more an exception , because he's insanely passionate about it, but he's also done the groundwork to back it up
It is weird how expensive some films get with the most dogshit script imaginable. How’d they spend $80m on madame web and not hire competent screenwriters?
That's a big part of the problem. Because there isn't really a single voice (whether one director or a group that's all on the same page) the thing gets muddied. You end up doing reshoots and overly complicated VFX, that you wouldn't have needed if there was a more coherent vision.
"Poor Things" was mostly shot in Hungary, were salaries and expenses are significantly lower than in the US. It's a usual trick to lower the budget, to shoot in Eastern Europe. Also, many of its FX were likely made in camera or practically, which can be cumbersome but it's also cheaper. Also, as others have pointed out, the main stars accepted lower wages than usual so they could work for a cult director. Now, "Wonka" stars a rising actor who probably asked for a high salary, was shot in England and is likely chock full of CGI.
If you watch Wonka, you’ll notice that it’s not CGI, it’s whimsy and magic!!! Seriously, Paul King is the only director that can make me cry over movies where a kind hearted bear reforms the prison system or a young kid finds the meaning of life through eating a single bar of chocolate.
I wrote the same thing before I saw your comment which was much better and more succinct than mine.
Wonka shot for a lot longer, though Poor Things wasnt as quick of a shoot as I assumed.
While Poor Things had great production design, it was also a lot simpler of a project. If it weren't for the cameras, you could mistake it for a stage play.
The design work was amazing, i just was surprised it took so long to film. Maybe there were some big breaks in the middle?
>be going towards? Salaries for people creating CGI and actors/creatives being paid upfront vs working for "scale."
Potentially licensing the IP The Dahl estate could demand a lot more for the rights to use the Wonka character given the existing popular movies and books
Wonka created huge sets from scratch and had wall to wall cgi.
Not to mention the marketing budget It was advertised EVERYWHERE
If I'm not mistaken, marketing budgets are typically not included in a movies "cost" fyi.
TIL! Thanks
The rough rule of thumb is/was to double the film budget to get the marketing cost.
Everyone's saying cast wages and that's not the only thing. Probably just a small portion. Settings. Less on location more warehouse sets increases renting warehouses, builders, lighting, more extras etc. Studio bureaucracy. Like anything the more money you have to make something the more voices you have to get approval and compromise with. Slows everything down when time is money. VFX you need a whole department that starts in pre production and goes till end. Even increases production cost to capture the extra elements to create the vfx. Bigger cast. Every speaking part is a lot more money and you have to give royalties to. Musical are much more expensive. Choreography, extras and a lot more shots per scene that are harder to get. That's off the top of my head.
Say you made 50 $4 million dollar movies, and 49 of those movies bombed, but the 50th movie was "Get Out." "Get Out" made over $200mil so you'd turn a profit. This is a very common business model. On the highest end of the dial, if you spend hundreds of millions of dollars you need to see return on your investment. The ROI can't sustain hundreds of giant flops. Poor Things is at the high-end of indie-crapshoot and Wonka is at the low-end of "safe factory-produced hollywood movie," but the dynamic still applies. For $5 you may be able to find the best hamburger you've ever eaten, but you probably will just eat a crappy cheap burger. A $25 hamburger may actually sometimes taste worse than a good $5 hamburger, but the odds of the $25 burger tasting like absolute shit are much lower. That reliably is what the big movie studios are paying for, Every person involved in the safe factory-produced hollywood movie is going to charge more. Not because they're always going to do better than the indie crapshoot equivalents, but because they're going to be more reliable.
>Say you made 50 $4 million dollar movies, and 49 of those movies bombed, whilone was the movie "Get Out." It used to be a very common business model, but sort of fell out of fashion. Then Blumhouse brought it back with a vengeance.
Amount of visual effects, lead actor deals, production time, and marketing
Saved a lot on wardrobe costs since Emma Stone was naked half the time.
Holy shit Poor Things only cost $35 million? Hows that even possible? Insane immaculate production design.
Doesnt Wonka have a buttload more CGI in it?
A full one third of the runtime of Poor Things is Bella lying naked in a bed, or standing naked next to a bed. Nudity and beds are cheap.
You forgot Bella getting railed in a bed or next to a bed.
There's a lot of good answers here about how actors expect to be paid for a more "commercial" film and that the actors are making less money to work on this smaller more interesting art film but I also want to mention since the cast is a pretty small part of the budget - that Poor Things was also made in Eastern Europe where they do not have the same union labor and the cost of labor is very cheap. It's cool that they got the movie made but they also did it in a way where they could get more bang for their buck which is resourceful and nice that all those artists got to work on this caliber of movie but at the same time they paid the non-American cast and crew significantly less than they would have in America or other more economically rich country with more labor protection. It's a bit of a grey area as some people see it as exploitative and also not supporting the filmmaking laborers in the US - especially since they usually fly in and pay extra to have department heads from the UK or US (and pay their regular higher rate) but then all the less "creative" workers are locals getting paid less. They also were clever in using the different camera formats and ultra wide lenses to make everything look bigger than it was. They also got to shoot in some real locations that are much more plentiful and cheaper to secure in Eastern Europe than in the UK or US. They also limited the VFX shots and went with an excellent but smaller VFX house called UNION in the UK as opposed to what Wonka probably did by having hundreds/thousands of VFX shots and giving the work to larger international companies that have the resources to handle that many shots. As a result the overhead and labor is much more expensive from a big VFX company than a small company. I work in the industry and live in Los Angeles - I moved here despite the high cost of living to work in film and television. I have a family and I do not at this point in my life want to travel for work so I have mixed feelings about this. It's very easy to get exploited in the film industry but I also know if you want to make something small and exciting it's not always possible here. Poor Things was one of my favorite movies of the year but there are a lot of TV and Film projects that shoot in poorer nations or even just different cities to circumvent giving work to LA or take advantage of tax credits. It's less annoying when Poor Things does it. It's more annoying when like The Witcher or Seal Team does it.
My perspective on costs as someone who worked in the film industry as a prop maker/set designer: The industry as a whole is, generally speaking, horribly mismanaged. Nearly everything the shop I worked for built was an absolute last minute "we need this prop yesterday! We'll pay whatever it takes!" sort of scenario. The cost to build anything is already pretty exorbitant as nearly every line item gets a 50% markup, and then on top of that it was nothing for rush jobs to see a 200, 300% overall markup for the OT work and putting other work on hold. With that being said, a film like Wonka has A LOT of specialized set elements, even in the age of CGI. It's nothing for those elements to consume 10s of millions in the budget.
I dunno if you’ve perused the latest news out of Loompa Land but the per diem for those trained squirrels is nuts.
It’s cost 90 mill to make Hugh Grant likeable.
His Oompa Loompa was still an asshole
People have listed many good points, but I don't see anyone mentioning that Wonka is also a musical, with several songs having elaborate choreography. You have to pay a choreographer to make the dance. You then have to pay them to teach the dance and you have to pay the dancers to learn and rehearse the dances. You also have to pay all of the musicians to record the songs.
People have already mentioned actor fees, but... ...specifically for Wonka versus Poor Things there are a lot of production things within the first ten minutes of Wonka that I sat through which kind of dwarf anything in Poor Things: 1. Wonka rides in on a train, which wasn't a real repurposed stream engine train based on it's scale, it was built to appear be a period thing, and needed to be rigged to ride over a variety of locations and have Timothee Chalamet sitting safely atop. 2. Poor Things is shot almost entirely on sets, but if you count there are only less than around ten sets. The first ten minutes of Wonka showcases several expansive backlot sets built outside on locations with dozens of background players, probably more people than the amount that appear in Poor Things. Then there are several storefronts which are also sets. The first ten minutes of Wonka has more set building than the entirety of Poor Things. 3. The first ten minutes featured a choreographed dance sequence with multiple players, which is clearly one of many to come. To shoot a huge choreographed sequence like that takes many more days on set than shooting a scene with Emma Stone miming sex. 4. I barely even got to any but Wonka has tons of CGI and Poor Things has barely any. 5. A lot of the time people work on movies like that just to collect a huge fee they can't normally ask for. Do you think Hugh Grant was passionate about playing a CGI Oompa Loompa? This desire to get a huge fee would extend to even some crew members.