How Peter Jackson Spends $90 Million

It was reported last week that famed hobbit documentary filmmaker and giant CGI ape enthusiast, Peter Jackson, had officially begun a studio dating game for his latest production, the adaptation of Alice Sebold’s best-selling (and utterly fantastic) drama The Lovely Bones. Now, ordinarily this bit of news would go unnoticed by me. All it really is is a director making a new movie. It’s not relevant that Jackson hasn’t made a straight-up drama in more than a decade, or that he’s coming off a particularly divisive remake of King Kong. And it’s even less relevant that while I can appreciate the merits and technical achievements of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the peculiar, dark humor of The Frighteners, I’ve never actually been a fan of his work or style of filmmaking. It’s not even troubling to me that a director I don’t care for is attempting to slag off his fan base in order to indie it up on a property I find to be of unending quality and lyrical mastery.

What is troubling (and quite significant) to me is the reported budget he is looking for.

Peter Jackson is asking for a whopping $65 million dollars to make what is essentially a small, weepy family drama with very slight fantastical elements. For all that don’t know, The Lovely Bones is a book about a murdered 14 year-old girl who recalls what happened to her while in heaven, as she watches the effects of her death on her family. Aside from having to visualize heaven (think white clouds), the movie is a four-wall set and some heavy dialogue. At no point should this film cost more than $30 million, and that’s counting Jackson’s A-list salary.

The question here is, what’s all the money being used for?

It’s no surprise to me that studios were hesitant to buy the rights to the project. Though Jackson is a mega-successful commercial director, he has never proven to be a viable entity in and of himself. He received widespread critical acclaim for his little girls lost drama Heavenly Creatures (which launched Kate Winslet), but just as soon as we started plotting him in for a yearly Oscar nod, he parlayed his newfound fame to bask in the bloody dead genre that started his career. The Frighteners was an anemic, disappointing follow-up, and after that he moved to the LotR trilogy. He never capitalized on his talents as a dramatic filmmaker. Sure, he can make an epic battle scene better than just about anyone not named Spielberg, Cameron or William Wallace, but can he deliver the goods with two people in a room sharing their feelings? Will his hugenormous geek audience come to see a Peter Jackson movie that doesn’t include orcs, apes or Elijah Wood? I have my doubts, and so does the rest of Hollywood.

This is all before we get into the budget concerns. Unless the film is stocked with marquee, A-list stars (such as The Departed), or has an unusually expensive quirk (say having to keep a legal action fund in case Russell Crowe got frustrated on the set of A Beautiful Mind), no small-minded drama should dare ring up a budget that high. This is the case for two reasons.

1. Dramas have a limited audience, as teens won’t want to see the movie, and the genre isn’t known for repeat business.
2. The success of the film is wholly dependent on intangibles. Whether the subject matter is relevant in today’s society, whether the marketing clearly sells the project (and to the right people), whether critics champion the film as a must see, the release date (a problem for even BIG dramas like Cinderella Man), the state of the marketplace, love for the cast, etc. While you can always bank on sci-fi movies having a built-in cache, dramas can never be relied upon to bring in a prepped and loyal audience.

Jackson must be banking on his name recognition to float the greenlight, and since DreamWorks did pick it up I suppose he had a point, but that still does not answer the question of why he needs $65 million to make this movie. Or why the studio thinks it can realistically recoup that cost. Here is a small list of high-profile dramas released in the last few years with their domestic box-office grosses, and their budgets in parenthesis.

• Babel: $34 Million ($22 Million)
• Capote: $28 Million ($7 Million)
• Cinderella Man: $61 Million ($88 Million)
• City By The Sea: $22 Million ($40 Million)
• Crash: $54 Million ($6.5 Million)
• The Constant Gardener: $33 million ($25 Million)
• A History of Violence: $31 Million ($32 Million)
• Million Dollar Baby: $100 Million ($30 Million)
• The Weather Man: $12 Million ($22 Million)

Only one of those films earned more than $65 million and that was due to an awards season push (as well as collective audience love for Clint Eastwood). Each of those high-profile dramas were toplined a legitimate movie star and each of them (save Baby) was merely a modest hit. Now note the production budgets. All of them save Cinderella Man were below $40 million. And the only reason Cinderella Man was that high was the salaries for Russell Crowe, Renee Zellweger, Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. The budgets of these films were kept low because producers knew that the box office potential was dicey, and because they were not that expensive to make.

So again I raise the point, why does Peter Jackson need $65 Million dollars to make The Lovely Bones?

New York Magazine reports that the astronomical figure does NOT even cover his presumably substantial fee for writing and directing the movie. So let’s crunch some numbers. Let’s assume that he’s asking for $20 Million dollars to write and direct the film (making the “real” cost of the film $85 Million). This hubris essentially caps the potential for casting a group of high profile actors, let alone one stand out star. But for the sake of the argument, let’s call his fee $20 million dollars. Now we can assume that a film of this magnitude would keep an additional $10-15 Million for the rest of the cast. So now we’re at $35 Million. The average budget for the films listed above, after salaries, is about $25 Million, putting us at $60 Million already (and these numbers don’t even include marketing and distribution costs)! Even if we assume that Alice Sebold is asking for $5 Million for the rights, where is the additional $20 Million going? Is it that expensive to create a “realistic” depiction of heaven? Is Jackson planning on building a full-scale replica? Babel was filmed in more than 20 different countries, had more than 60 speaking parts and starred two huge actors and that only cost $7 Million TOTAL! I feel like I’m taking crazy pills here!

There has to be a reason he’s asking for so much money. There’s got to be something he needs the money for, beyond the cost of film, set design and salary. And since he won’t own up to his ridiculous demands, I’m left to muse on the possibilities. Here’s is what I think the mysterious extra $20 Million is being used for:

• $3 Million for his new experimental Middle Earth-breeding zoo (containing big ass spiders, orcs, bland elves and Walloping Wallobees!). He has Sean Astin down in New Zealand donating DNA as we speak.
• $3 Million for a letter writing campaign to all the disappointed movie-goers that lost 30% feeling in their asses during the interminable third act of King Kong (did we really need the ice-skating scene? Really?).
• $4 Million for hush money to Elijah Wood, owing to an agreement that made one night on the set of The Two Towers when PJ got a little handsy with Elijah’s personal hobbit.
• $2 Million to have fat pushed back into his body so that he can return to the roly-poly form that made him so fun and creative back before King Kong ate his soul.
• $3 Million to cast Orlando Bloom as a grieving uncle and then CGI some charisma into his performance. WETA technicians are locked in a room as we speak trying to figure out how to do this. The outlook is grim.
• $1 Million for legal representation to get a restraining order against Jack Black and the portly comic’s attempts at once again “rocking the drama salami peppercorn style, man!”
• $2 Million for effects work on an inevitable deleted scene that has Susie, the murdered star of the movie, randomly falling love with a large ape that has a predilection for triple toe loops and double axels.
• $2 Million personally handed to him by the makers of Eragon as an apology for lifting whole passages of the movie from Lord of the Rings.

Let’s use Million Dollar Baby as a cost comparison. Both films are directed by beloved, successful icons. Both are adaptations of well-regarded literary properties. Assuming Jackson acquires a like-minded cast, both films will be stocked with a bevy of heavy-hitting actors. And this one’s the key: both films are about small, interpersonal relationships.

NOW…

Clint Eastwood commands a large fee for his services. By all estimates he makes as much as Peter Jackson. Clint was coming off of Mystic River, a commercial and critical hit. He was starring in the movie with Morgan Freeman, himself quite a box office draw. By all rights, Million Dollar Baby (or even Mystic River) is the exact model that The Lovely Bones should be following. So home come Million Dollar Baby cost half as much? How come Mystic River cost less than 40% of The Lovely Bones? Why are Clint’s movies less expensive than Peter Jackson’s?

I’ll give you one more example for comparison’s sake, just to hammer my point home. 300, which was done completely in a digital environment and made with nearly as many effects shots as an average Star Wars movie, cost only $65 million to make. So unless The Lovely Bones is being re-envisioned as a large-scale digital war movie, replete with eight-pack abs and crazy big warrior elephants, someone made a mistake in the accounting.

Obviously, there is money being spent on The Lovely Bones that no one wants to talk about. Movies cost a lot of money, that’s just the way of the world. And some movies cost more money than they should, for a variety of reasons. Some directors prefer smaller budgets, as it helps them to retain creative control. Others just see no point in excess. Or they just work better under tighter, more demanding circumstances. And some just plain don’t know how to handle money. But this is the first time I’ve ever looked at the production budget for a movie and openly questioned it.

While there are probably solid reasons for spending so much money. I’d rather see Jackson spend less money and try to use that handicap to push his creativity. If he’s really taking a pause from making big-budget sci-fi epics, he needs to embrace the sensibilities of art-house filmmaking. And though he doesn’t get to film a heaven strewn with mythical creatures fighting to the death, he does get to make a wonderfully insightful drama about a family trying to cope with the loss of a loved one. And maybe, just maybe, he gets to be put back on the short list for Oscar.

Here’s hoping he comes to his senses, fires his accountant, and keeps the film under three hours. My ass can’t take anymore of his filmic abuse.

Bangarang!

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