$75 million budget?????
Does anyone know how this budget was spent? Sounds to me like like Apatow cut himself, his wife, and 2 of his best friends a MASSIVE cheque for this film! Greedy b@stards!
share7 replies and not one mentions the crew - the people who *work* on the film. Even if you do some unscientific math - assume there's 1000 people that make only $40K - that's already 40 million.
shareAverage salary for a film crew member in California is $60k/yr, or $5k/mo. Funny People had a shooting schedule of four months, which translates to $20k. (x 1000 = $20 mil).
Still a ridiculous budget for a comedy shot in California.
Yeah, it's ridiculous that they would have to pay people to work on a comedy shot in California.
shareNot ridiculous that the crew had to be paid, obviously. But as someone already pointed out, This is 40 was made for $35m. Six years later, comedies like Get Hard, Paul Blart 2, Hot Pursuit...each made for between 30 and 40.
Much more reasonable, right?
True, but the problem is not all budgets are equal. We really aren't privy to the details of each production. Crew sizes vary from production to production. Star salaries vary. Out of the movies you mentioned, only Will Ferrell makes the kind of money Adam Sandler makes but Funny People also had Seth Rogen - none of those other movies had co-stars at that same salary level as Rogen. Presumably, based on success, Judd Apatow's salary went up after 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up and then down again after Funny People didn't live up to expectations. As you pointed out, Funny People shot for 4 months. The others shot for 2. Funny People was shot on film. The others were shot digitally. You see what I'm saying? You can't compare one budget to another without getting into the details of each production.
shareFair enough. Keep in mind though, pretty much everyone here mentioned Apatow's and Sandler's salaries. You brought up the crew members, who can't be paid much differently from production to production (and, at the very least, should be earning more now than they did in '09).
My original point being that no one else had thought about the fact that there was an actual crew that got paid. I only bring up Apatow/Sandler salaries as comparisons to the other movies that didn't have the same "star" level salaries.
Crews may very well be paid more now than '09, but paying a crew in '15 for a 2 month shoot is still going to cost less than a 4 month shoot. And not just in salaries, but craft services will cost less. Travel expenses will be less. The cost of extras will be less. I don't know where the other movies were shot, but often productions will go to other states (or even Canada or Mexico) to keep costs down. Shooting in LA is definitely more expensive than shooting at The Mall of America, for instance.
My examples didn't even get into pre-production or post-production costs and what the differences for those might be. But, for example, just the cost of developing, processing and digitizing of film is already going to be more expensive than shooting straight to digital. Anyway, when all those types of things are factored in, I'm not surprised that Funny People cost more.
Good points -- a lot of those factors I didn't take into consideration.