About New Moon: With all these pots of money the movie is earning, does the cast get to share in the windfall? At the very least will they gets cars or Rolexes or something? And are these kids finally A-listers now?
—Scarlett via the Answer B!tch inbox
As much as you may think that Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart each deserve a brand new shiny Volvo for delivering all that magic over the weekend, as far as I know, they'll just have to settle for millions and millions of dollars.
As for a piece of the action and other perks, well...
...yes, according to reports, the deals afforded to Stewart and Pattinson include not only a raise from about $2 million on the original Twilight to about $12 million, but also a percentage of the profits.
That $12 million figure applies per film, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, meaning that, presumably, Stewart and Pattz got at least an additional $12 million for Eclipse, and they should get something close—or, let's hope, better—for Breaking Dawn.
And that's standard for successful franchises.
"The percentage is usually pretty small—5 percent or less—but I have seen them higher," entertainment attorney Christopher J. Cabott tells me. "In most cases, the costs to make the film never get fully recouped and the talent's percentage never comes into play. On a blockbuster like Twilight: New Moon, however, the costs should get recouped and the talent's percentage on net profits should equate to a handsome payday."
Gifts are also common, and I have no doubt that if Summit is smart, it'll at least toss Taylor Lautner some new shirts. (No reliable reports indicate what kind of pay raise Lautner earned for his near overnight bulking up to play Jacob Black, but lawyers tell me he's likely getting a hefty increase, too.)
Such traditions have been going on for quite a while.
Way back in the 1990s, when Macaulay Culkin was considered merely a jaded child actor and not a jaded adult actor, he starred in franchise called Home Alone. When it came times for Home Alone 2, Mac got a pay raise from $100,000 (and no percentage deal or "points") to $5 million and 5 per cent of the profits. That made him Hollywood's first millionaire movie star born in the 1980s. The Culkin family was also offered a Range Rover by Fox studios as an incentive to sign on for Home Alone 2 before the first film's release.
As to your second question, they're not A-listers yet.
The true definition of an A-lister is an actor who can open a film on name alone and do it across many, many demographics, from teens to retirees. Pattz may have women, but old dudes have yet to get on that train.
"This film is very much character based," Cabott rightly points out, "and the characters are adapted from a series of books. The cast was selected primarily on who best personified the book's characters and not so much on how their acting fit the script."
That is, if they even want to keep acting. Like Harry Potter star Emma Watson, these kids may make so much money off of their percentage deals that they never have to take a role they hate, ever again.
[Leslie Gornstein at e online]
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