Posted by Peter Debruge
The Body of Lies trailer just hit the web, and it's hard to make much of the movie at this point. I mean, for all the quotable one-liners William Monahan gave us in The Departed, they simply can't seem to find a catch phrase suitable for the trailer (benefit of the doubt: for all we know, the best lines could very well be punctuated with expletives).
One thing we can conclude is that makeup artists have no trouble aging 44-year-old Russell Crowe (but we knew that already from The Insider), but no matter how hard they try, they simply can't make Leonardo DiCaprio look his age (33). This one's directed by Ridley Scott, and from the limited taste we get here, the look leans pretty heavily toward kid brother Tony's 2001 thriller Spy Game. This project marks the first lead cinematographer credit in 26 years for longtime second unit d.p. Alexander Witt (Gladiator, Casino Royale).
Russell Crowe narrates the tantalizingly-titled Bra Boys, a hit surfing doc Down Under set on the big wave beaches of Australia. Imagine producer Brian Grazer is planning a feature version starring Crowe, who would make his directorial debut.
The story is based on the Abberton brothers Sunny, Koby, and Jai (pro surfer Koby, right, has captured the media's attention by dating Tara Reid and Paris Hilton). Directed by Sunny, the rough-and-tumble sports pic explores big wave surfing as the brothers' escape from their drug-addict parents, among other things. The doc will open April 11 in New York, L.A. and Oahu.
Based on American Gangster's stellar advance tracking with all audiences (well ahead of The Departed, thanks to the urban demo), the Ridley Scott movie should be a big hit when it opens November 2; it could go all the way to the Oscars. But did the movie have to cost so much?
Claudia Eller's LAT story doesn't make clear that Brian Grazer, the 500-pound producer gorilla on the Universal lot, was able to push the movie through with a $100-million price tag--even after the studio had already written off a $30-million loss --in the wake of Stacey Snider's defection to DreamWorks in February 2006.
Grazer cannily took advantage of Universal's need to send a message of strength and viability; brand-new co-chairmen Marc Shmuger and David Linde went ahead with the deluxe deal. If Snider had not left, she would likely have kept the budget down. The key players got paid full price, with rich back ends. Denzel Washington had already gotten paid his upfront guarantee pay-or-play, so he signed on just for his gross. (He also got paid half his $20-million fee on Inside Man.) This way even when American Gangster makes money, so do gross participants Washington, Scott, Grazer and Russell Crowe. That adds up to a huge piece of the final gross going out the door--in all likelihood, some 37.5 25% of the gross. ($37.5 was Universal's all-time high, on Grinch.) The studios are all trying to not go over that 25%, which is still a hideous percentage.
UPDATE: Studio insiders argue that they believed that the movie demanded an epic scale, so they returned to writer Steve Zaillian's original vision. They negotiated overage protection with Grazer and Scott. The gross package was pulled back to 25% from near 60% if everyone had gotten their full cut. American Gangster was shot fast and tight with multiple cameras on real locations, and cost about half of what Michael Mann's Miami Vice cost. And the music budget was rigorously monitored, coming in at just $2 million.
Russell Crowe as a western anti-hero badass I can go for. Christian Bale looks believable, too. But does James Mangold know how to pull it off?
Eastwood is one of the last directors of the older generation who knows how to direct a western. Lawrence Kasdan, who is a gifted director, couldn't do it with Wyatt Earp. Kevin Costner did a creditable job with Dances with Wolves. Walter Hill proved that he is one of the best western directors with not only Geronimo, which did not work at the boxoffice, but the cable hit Broken Trail. TV is where westerns still have a home.
It's like directing musicals. You have to understand the inner workings of the genre. And how to make it look right. The props. The horses. The sets. The stunts. It's all of a piece. I'm always rooting for this embattled big-screen genre to succeed. We'll see. Lionsgate opens the movie September 7.
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