MovieChat Forums > Wonder Boys (2000) Discussion > High Budget

High Budget

posted 16 years ago by gilb
2 replies | jump to latest

I remember there was a post related to this a while back that is since gone, but: has anyone determined what attributed to the high budget for the film? I see it now states $35 million, but I thought previously it was noted as even higher.

What, was Douglas getting $20 mil+ up front pay?

Or, perhaps it was all the fake weather scenes they had to create - as it was in the 80's & 90s in Pittsburgh when they were filming those snowy and rainy scenes.

---
I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.
---

[–] DryToast 16 years ago

IMDb reports a three-month shooting schedule, but I've seen it reported elsewhere as four and a half months. Either way, isn't that a long time to film a small movie that takes place over the course of 48 hours in a few sections of Pittsburgh? Wendy and Lucy took three weeks. Not that Wonder Boys was as simple a project, but still!

"Please! You're not at home!"

[–] The-Kissable-Writer 15 years ago

Maybe Mr.Hanson's very meticulous, I don't know how Kubrick-esque he is (in the sense of getting carried away in his perfectionism). He shot - the, admittately, much more complex film - LA Confidential in four months as well. Most of the time when I hear a shooting-schedule described it's 6 to 8 weeks.

It's not a bad thing that there's a lot of money, thought and time is put into a movie that - on the surface - appears to have modest ambitions in the dark comedy genre. Most of these movies - not that there aren many, or one even, movie(s) like this - are all too easily brushed away just because they never contain more than flashes of brilliance, interspersed with jokes that miss target or a quickly construed insincere moment of sentimentality.

O human race born to fly upward, wherefore at a little wind dost thou fall.