whatilearned
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twins_(1988_film)
TIL that instead of taking their usual salaries for ”Twins”, Schwarzenegger and DeVito both agreed with the studio to take 20% of the film’s box office returns which resulted in them receiving the biggest paychecks of their film careers ( movie made $216 million worldwide)
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“Wasn’t there a sequel meant to happen?” I was asking myself.
Turns out [yes](https://deadline.com/2021/09/twins-sequel-triplets-tracy-morgan-joins-arnold-schwarzenegger-danny-devito-ivan-reitman-hot-toronto-film-package-1234830766/)! It’s shooting January next year, wonder if the paychecks will be as big this time…
That seems like a ridiculously high % to offer by the studio unless it was confident the movie would be a complete flop, in which case why even make it in the first place??
That would be $499.5 million worldwide today, and 20% of the gross would be $99.9 million in today’s dollars.
Such a classic 80’s flick to. I saw it a few months back and it still holds up. RIP Kelly Preston.
I’m sure it often works out for studios to take a calculated or “smart” risk by making deals like this, but man do they sometimes get a stinker of a deal or just plain lose out on money they could have been making by taking a bigger cut of the overall returns.
Wasn’t giving George Lucas the arrangement he got for Star Wars kind of a case of virtually giving money away to him because they wrongly thought it wouldn’t do that well and it seemed like a good way to keep him happy or short him without actually giving him that much money? Only it turned out they WERE giving him a lot of money basically?
No Hollywood accounting?
I wonder all the times an actor has done this and then the movie flopped?
The 80s were weird when it came to going to the movies. I remember seeing ads for this movie. So I wanted to watch it. For whatever reason. I was 8 years old. So my mother dropped my sister and I off at the movie theater, sister was 10, and we got tickets and snacks and watched a movie that I really don’t remember anything about. And we did this for nearly every single big movie. Dropped off, picked up afterwards, didn’t matter what it was as long as it wasn’t rated R
Arnold talks about it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHL_UXfWT44
Reading that wiki reminded of their other movie, Junior. I forget how most of it goes but the main plot point is that Danny DeVito gets Arnold pregnant and then hijinks ensue
wait is that 20% each?? as in 40% of a films profits went to two people?
if this were true why does devito share a studio and bed with a roommate
It was a three way split between 2 leads and the director.
I have never understood why all actors and studios don’t do this, if you give an actor part of the cut they will really perform and want the film to succeed and make a lot, all those actors who go around to circulate the film while it is theatres making the rounds would be far more motivated if they had a lager stake in the film.
Great news on the [sequel](https://deadline.com/2021/09/twins-sequel-triplets-tracy-morgan-joins-arnold-schwarzenegger-danny-devito-ivan-reitman-hot-toronto-film-package-1234830766/)!
Being a comedy, it _really_ wasn’t expected to do as well as, say, Terminator or anything like that. Sure, they figured it would do _well_, because of both actors being pretty damn popular at the time, but it’s really one movie that did wind up being a genuine “surprise hit”. Especially given the “silly” premise.
Isn’t a fairly routine practice in Hollywood to give someone a cut of the movie’s profits but then cook the books to say that the movie actually made a loss despite performance in the Box Office? I seem to recall that there were a number of authors who were “paid” in that manner for the rights to their creations.
Ah yes, the original “The Rock with Kevin Hart” dynamic.
you had me in the first half
gross or net?
Always take the gross. Movie accounting is special & even big hits can magically not make a cent profit for decades.
Someone’s Hollywood accountants got fired!