THOR is shaping up to be an intriguing prospect. Story details that have leaked online paint it as a sweeping, epic mythological adventure film. Count me in.
Director Matthew Vaughn, the man guiding this film, is an extremely talented director. His gangster movie LAYER CAKE was an assured debut and STARDUST, though it hasn’t made it over here yet, looks like a great family film.
He’s been working pretty intensively on THOR trying to get it ready for a pre-strike shoot. However if his recent article in The Guardian is anything to go by the script might need a rewrite to get the budget down to something manageable.
Vaughn, writing for the Brit newspaper that got Paddy Considine killed this summer, explains what a week is like in his shoes – which includes seeing Ricky Gervais‘ Fame show and being largely ignored by the red carpet press thanks to Mrs Vaughn.
Interestingly he mentions working on the THOR script with Mark Protosevich and getting a call from Marvel:
“My phone has just rung. Marvel loves the [THOR] script. The only problem is that it has been costed at $300m and they ask how I am going to reduce it by $150m. I think I prefer being asked what it’s like working with De Niro.”
$300 million is the next budget milestone looming. Not so long ago people were fretting over $200 million, but since BATMAN & ROBIN (I’ve heard from many people that the numbers were fudged on that one) and TITANIC smashed that number we’ve seen it frequently exceeded. It’ll be fascinating to see if the 300 number is passed in the next few years.
I like Vaughn – if it wasn’t for him Daniel Craig would never have been Bond and for that I’m grateful – so I hope they get the budget down without damaging the scope of the movie too much. $300 million may sound like panic stations but would he really write about having that problem in a national newspaper if he didn’t think it could be fixed?
source – the guardian
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8 Comments
After Sin City and Sky Captain and the World of Tommorw, I cannot conceieve of the film that REQUIRES a 300-million dollar budget. And we all knnow it’s the CGI that’s driving the cost. But what are they paying for that could make an absurd figure like 300-million come up?
If Peter Jackson can bring in each of the Lord of the Rings films for 100 mil (give or take ten or so mil) and George “I can destroy my masterpiece if I want!” Lucas can bring in his new Star Wars films for about 100 mil each (give or take ten mil) then there’s no excuse for anybody claiming they need to have 300 million. NOTHING “requires” it! Nothing!
I saw Superman Returns and whoever charged them 250-millions took them to the cleaners for no damned reason other than that the producers were too f*cking stupid to say, “Uhm, what are we paying you a quarter billion for again?”
We’ve all seen the summer SFX blockbusters, there’s NOTHING they can show us that we haven’t already seen –twice! So they need to stop it with the, “Oh this is going to be groundbreaking! Unprecedented!”
The hell it will. I’ll bet you 300-mil that merely hiring another SFX company could bring that price tag down considerably.
[...] atención a unas declaraciones recuperadas por Obsessed With Film y realizadas por el mismísimo Matthew Vaughn para el diario The Guardian. Hay un momento en [...]
I agree with JaySmack. Even that ridiculous 3-hour King Kong movie “only” cost 207 million, I can’t believe Thor was priced a hundred million more than that. Not even Jim Cameron could figure out how to waste that much on a movie, let alone Matthew Vaughn. The guy got Layer Cake made for peanuts.
I wouldn’t at all be surprised if this is just a lot of hype –er, I mean a little exaggeration- for the sake of making it seem this guy’s put together some sort of really BIG movie.
He would hardly be the first to try something along these lines.
Let’s get some perspective:
Frank Miller’s 300 cost 60 million total to produce –compare that to Gladiator’s $103-mil budget and Troy which was nearly $200-mil. Bear keep in mind Zack Snyder had been given a mandate by his producer to “create an epic as big as Troy for only one-third the cost.”
Imagine that! The studio says give us a huge movie at low cost, the director goes out and does it. Hmmm, there’s a lesson to be learned there!
But if Vaughn’s truly being straight about this being the initial budget-estimate, then I have to wonder why anybody feels he needs that much. Dean Devlin said in an interview that CGI has actually gotten cheaper, not more expensive, in the last ten years. According to Devlin, Indpendence Day cost 85 million in 1996, and it was mostly due to the “groundbreaking” CGI work, but today he said he could have easily brought the same movie in for 50-million, maybe even less! Think about that.
I know that the amount of money a director/producer/actor is able to make a studio pony-up on their behalf is one measure of who’s pecker is swinging the lowest at the moment, but what’s that got to do with actual moviemamking?
The studio-model of bigger-for-bigger’s-sake, wildly-inefficient filmmaking has got to stop.
And what really annoys me is that as these movies sky-rocket in price the studios eventully put the pain on the theater owners who in turn squeeze the audiences for higher ticket prices. So if anyone wants to know what business is the budget price of mine, I say, “As long as the cost is reflected in the ticket price –plenty!”
After 100 years of moviemaking and 15-plus years of CGI there’s no excuse for ANY movie coming in at over 120 mil anymore, and as 300/LOTR etc prove even that’s going 50 mil overboard. The cost of making a freaking flick has already plataued, it’s the ego’s and stupidity of the filmmakers themselves that has no bounds! They’re not doing anything new! Why do they try to pretend as if they are? It won’t sell one more ticket.
Seriously, why is it that having Hugo Weaving standing in front of a green screen ten years ago cost 80 million, but having some muscle-bound chump doing the same thing in Superman Returns costs 4 times as much, when the flick only has one-tenth of the CGI work, and none of the story?
I would advise Vaughn and his bosses to reign in their egos. Superman Returns and Evan Almighty both cost 250 mil, and we all know how well those two did. Meanwhile Harry Potter quietly conquered the box-office.
There’s a lesson to be learned in that as well!
After Stardust, I will be extremely surprised if this project has a $150 million price tag, but we shall see.
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OK – LOTR, SW prequels and KK were alll filmed in NZ or Australia leading to them being MUCH cheaper than if they had been made in the US due to the favourable exchange rate.
SR was also made in Australia but the budget of $250 million includes 10 years of stalled Superman Lives movies where people like Tim Burton and Nicholas cage got paid not to make a movie.
And of course CGI is getting cheaper – computers are faster, more efficient and cheaper than they were when Independence Day was made. Theres much more people skilled in the use of the software.
I would be very worried at the prospect of a Thor movie with a substantial budget though. The character has none of the built-in audience that something like Harry Potter had. Should do great in Scandinavia though.
[...] to the strike. Where once we were hearing about it with some frequency (including a potentially astronomical budget), now everything is silent on that movie’s [...]