Iron Man 2 finally coming along today! A few notes on its troubled production history, if only to jab at Marvel for pinching pennies on what’s about to be a mammoth payday. The first installment made $318 million domestically and near $600 million worldwide, with only The Dark Knight keeping it from being the year’s biggest film. In short, it seems unlikely that Marvel or anyone else would ever have thought it a stretch to guarantee the sequel (which is already up to $133 million in the overseas market) would be another bonanza, and yet Marvel went about putting together the pieces for Iron Man 2 in the most parsimonious of manners.
Director Jon Favreau nearly didn’t return. Not long after Iron Man’s May 2008 release, Marvel announced an April 2010 release date for IM2. Favreau expressed some concern on his Myspace page, and mentioned that negotiations with Marvel were on hold, not having heard from them in five weeks. Not long after, IESB reported that a source at Marvel admitted money was the issue, that Favreau expected a bump from his Iron Man fee, but that Marvel didn’t feel Favreau’s presence was integral to Iron Man 2’s success and was considering replacing him with someone less expensive.
Despite the modern iteration of the character being designed after him in the comics, Samuel L. Jackson was almost lowballed out of returning as Nick Fury, a role that would be relevant not only in Iron Man 2, but the upcoming Captain America and The Avengers films as well. Jackson told the L.A. Times that contract talks had broken down: “There seems to be an economic crisis in the Marvel Comics world, so [they're saying to me], ‘We’re not making that deal.’”
Mickey Rourke, fresh off his comeback role in The Wrestler and the best critical goodwill of his career, was offered a rather meager-for-this-sort-of-thing $250,000, low enough that he told New York magazine that he was off the project.
In the highest-profile of these cases, co-star Terrence Howard was scrapped as Jim Rhodes, replaced by Don Cheadle. Stories differ on this one, but Howard had been the first actor signed to the Iron Man, and improbably enough had the highest salary — higher than Robert Downey, Jr. — so when it came time for part 2, Howard’s salary was the first thing that they looked at; reportedly, Marvel wanted to cut his pay by 50 to 80 percent. Howard told NPR that he found out he’d lost the job through the trades. Other sources say that Favreau and the producers weren’t happy with Howard’s performance, and when Favreau and screenwriter Justin Theroux started trimming Howard’s role (with Jim Rhodes set to become War Machine in the second installment, the role should have been expanded from the first), Marvel took the opportunity to offer a proportionately lower cut.
It’s easy to play armchair exec. Truth is, I wouldn’t want to be in Marvel’s payroll department, cutting checks for Robert Downey, Jr., Don Cheadle, Edward Norton, Samuel L. Jackson, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, and company when budget time for The Avengers rolls around. Times are tough all over, and it’s hard to fault Marvel for trying to cut some corners on a film they knew would come in at a minimum budget around $150 million. Still, when you run into public tiffs with four of the major players in your production, it may be wise to reconsider your tactics.
We can probably chalk some of it up to posturing in the press as a way of negotiating — Jackson probably expected to be asked back, and Rourke’s quarter-mil was an opening offer — but the fact that Terrence Howard didn’t end up returning may say something about Marvel’s bottom line. Let’s hope they find a good way to do right by the creative types and still keep the coffers where they need to be. Nobody wants to see this:
A nice holiday touch: today Robert Rodriguez and Danny Trejo released a special Cinco de Mayo trailer of Machete.
[The trailers keep getting yanked; you can check it out here if the video refuses to play.]
The timeliness isn’t really about Cinco de Mayo, of course, but the snarled “to ARIZONA.” With the police-state Arizona immigration law SB1070* in the news, the film is thematically relevant, the story here revealed to be about Machete & co. standing up against right-wing anti-immigration forces. Machete, like the film from which it spun off, is couched in a faux-grimy exploitation veneer; like Grindhouse, it’s too well-cast to feel all that much like the exploitation films it apes, though it’s hard to be too mad at the big-namers (Robert De Niro, Jessica Alba, Michelle Rodriguez, Lindsay Lohan, etc.) for wanting to have a little fun with Rodriguez on a goofy retro-tinger actioner.
*Jeff Fahey violates SB 1070 in the preview. See if you can spot it!
Machete should be the first of the Grindhouse trailers (once jokey bits to provide atmosphere for Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s retro evening-on-42nd-Street assemblage, now considerably less so) to make it to release, scheduled for September 3rd. Hobo With A Shotgun (you might not have seen that trailer during Grindhouse; it won a contest at South By Southwest, and only shipped with some prints of the film) started shooting in late April with Rutger Hauer in the title role. As a considerably more independent flick, it might end up quicker to its presumed straight-to-DVD release date.
Other Grindhouse spin-off updates: Eli Roth still wants to make Thanksgiving into a feature film, and discussed with Edgar Wright the possibility of combining it with a full-length version of Don’t to comprise Grindhouse 2. Who would have thought that out of any given group of filmmakers, Rob Zombie would be the most restrained?
Samuel Bayer’s not the only one fighting back against studio pressure for 3-D — the Robocop remake ran into trouble when MGM wanted Darren Aronofsky to make the flick in 3-D. (It’s presumably the first time a studio wanted Aronofsky to make one of his movies deeper.) Aronofsky argued, preferring to stick with practical and creative effects and citing the success of The Fountain’s alternative effects methodology (macrophotography, underwater shooting, fluid dynamics, and other non-CGI wizardry). After Brad Pitt had a well-publicized walkoff from The Fountain, it was eventually reconceived at half the budget. Aronofsky and his crew, looking for a new outlook on the picture, accomplished wonders visually with a relative minimum of both computer-generated imagery and money.
Speaking of a minimum of money, the teaser poster pictured is apparently legitimate. No, I can’t believe it either. Is it unfair to pit Robocop vs. Terminator? They’ve tussled in the past. So we’ve got this godawful 1992esque Robocop…thing, which wouldn’t be out of place at We Have Lasers!!!!, versus the rather forward-thinking Terminator: Salvation motion poster (see it in motion here). It’s like comparing the production values of Robocop 3 and Terminator 2. Though to be fair, it’s also like comparing their respective budgets.
Also on the topic of budgets: the 3-D debate wasn’t the primary holdup with Robocop. That’d be MGM restructuring, teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, and possibly heading toward sale in the face of almost four billion dollars in debts. Writer David Self maintains that both he and Aronofsky are still attached, and that the film could proceed as planned once MGM is sold, bailed out, or otherwise restructured. Knowing that Aronofsky and MGM were at odds, nobody would be surprised to see him dropped from the project when MGM finally gets to move forward with it. I’d like to see the Aronofsky version, but he’s not hurting for work, with four upcoming directorial projects in addition to Black Swan, a just-wrapped drama featuring Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, and Winona Ryder.
Don’t worry about David Self either. He’s got another writing project scheduled for 2011 besides Robocop. That’d be Deathlok, a fairly unpopular Marvel Comics property about a man who is transformed, without his approval, into a unstoppable cyborg agent for an ethically questionable corporation. He’s set at odds with the corporation, questioning their purpose and yearning to be with his family again. However — and this is crucial — the human/metal division of Deathlok’s face is vertical, whereas Robocop’s is horizontal.
Wait, no it wasn’t. It made changes from the source material (2002 Hong Kong police drama Infernal Affairs) that detracted from the story. The ending didn’t really work for a handful of reasons. And how many times do we need to hear that same Dropkick Murphys song? If your movie relies on one particular tune more than That Thing You Do!, it might be worth making a phone call to your music coordinator.
Still, I liked the atmosphere, and there were some good aspects. The pacing feels surprisingly quick for a long, talky film, and most of that talk is pretty sharp. Lots of weirdly entertaining performances of the aggressive, macho sort that nobody seems to bring out of actors as readily as Martin Scorsese. It can be a bit much — Jack Nicholson goes off the track a bit in the second half — but it’s pretty fun to watch Alec Baldwin revisit his knockout turn in Glengarry Glen Ross and play it as a comedy this time around.
So let’s compromise, and say there’s some good stuff in The Departed, but there are clearly aspects that don’t work. I’m gonna go ahead and take out part.
With that part removed, Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker (who won the Best Editing Oscar for this flick) can tighten up the formerly 151-minute movie a bit.
Excellent, the deed is done. Now throw some zombies in there and we’re all set.
Things to like about the new Nightmare on Elm Street remake, which opened at $32 million over the weekend (lower than Friday the 13th remake, higher than Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween). It’ll drop precipitously next weekend.
Director Samuel Bayer, when pressed by Paramount about turning the flick 3-D, turned it down. We need more of that.
Jackie Earle Haley is in the top tier of working actors, certainly as far as playing maniacs interestingly.
I’ve been reliably told I can save ten bucks on it by waiting for DVD.
The script I started writing years ago for just such a project wasn’t completed, and didn’t end up in this movie.
The sequel is already greenlit (and will be shot in 3-D). Considering that the remake is pretty faithful to the original overall, perhaps we can hold out some hope that the sequel will be transparently about homosexual panic, as was the case in the original Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2.
Bayer stuck to his guns and said in several interviews he wouldn’t make a sequel. I always admire that.
Sam, why wouldn’t you do a sequel?
Samuel Bayer: It’s funny, with the right circumstances you never know…you should never say never.
Hmm.
The more money Michael Bay makes as producer, the fewer films he’ll need to direct?
Iron Man 2 finally coming along today! A few notes on its troubled production history, if only to jab at Marvel for pinching pennies on what’s about to be a mammoth payday. The first installment made $318 million domestically and near $600 million worldwide, with only The Dark Knight keeping it from being the year’s biggest film. In short, it seems unlikely that Marvel or anyone else would ever have thought it a stretch to guarantee the sequel (which is already up to $133 million in the overseas market) would be another bonanza, and yet Marvel went about putting together the pieces for Iron Man 2 in the most parsimonious of manners.
