A week ago, the New York Times published a piece about Apple’s flailing movie company. At first, Apple simply went to film festivals and purchased smaller art-house films and gave them limited theatrical releases, then dumped the films on AppleTV+ streaming. Then Apple became their own studio, spending lavishly to produce films with big-name directors and big-name actors. Most of those films were critical disappointments and a huge waste of time and money. Well, Apple had a plan for Wolfs, the big reunion-project for George Clooney and Brad Pitt. Apple produced the film and they planned to do a big, splashy promotion with an ad buy during the Olympics, ahead of an international blitz and a wide theatrical release. Just before the Olympics, Apple canceled the ad buy and announced that Wolfs would only get a small theatrical release before streaming on AppleTV.

The NYT piece also claimed that Pitt and Clooney were each paid $35 million for Wolfs, and that Apple executives had really begun to question how much money they were blowing for sh-tty films like Wolfs. The Times reported that “there was a thought within the company to not risk a public disappointment should the movie not succeed at the box office…CAA, the agency that represents Mr. Clooney, Mr. Pitt and Mr. Watts, did not fight the last-minute move, since the lack of promotion could have led to a theatrical underperformance affecting its clients’ reputations.” Basically, Wolfs had box-office bomb written all over it and rather than roll the dice with a theatrical release, Apple is just shuffling it off to streaming to save everyone’s reputations. Well, George was asked about all of this in Venice.

George Clooney has set right a claim that he and Wolfs co-star Brad Pitt were paid around $35 million each for the film, as reported in a New York Times article.

At one point, Clooney explained that the pair gave portions of their salaries back after a theatrical deal fell through for the film, meaning it gets a limited release in “a couple of hundred theaters,” and brought up a New York Times article published last week by Nicole Sperling that said he and Pitt were paid more than $35 million each.

“[It was] an interesting article and whatever her source was for our salary, it is millions and millions and millions of dollars less than what was reported. And I am only saying that because I think it’s bad for our industry if that’s what people think is the standard bearer for salaries,” Clooney said. “I think that’s terrible, it’ll make it impossible to make films.”

“Yes, we wanted it to be released [in theaters]. We’ve had some bumps along the way, that happens. When I did [Clooney-directed biographical sports drama] The Boys in the Boat, we did it for MGM, and then it ended up being for Amazon and we didn’t get a foreign release at all, which was a surprise. There are elements of this that we are figuring out. You guys are all in this too. We’re all in this industry and we’re trying to find our way post-COVID and everything else, and so there’s some bumps along the way. It is a bummer of course, but on the other hand, a lot of people are going to see the film and we are getting a release in a few hundred theaters, so we’re getting a release. But yeah, it would’ve been nice if we to have a wide release.”

[From THR]

As I said in a previous story, what happened to Wolfs isn’t some unusual situation in Hollywood these days – filmmakers and actors are getting screwed over a lot these days and even after the SAG-AFTRA strike, there are still tons of issues to be worked out on distribution and streaming. That being said, it’s funny as hell that this happened to Clooney and Pitt. They really thought this was going to be a much-needed box-office success, and then Apple saw the movie and was like “nope, let’s pretend this didn’t happen.” As for the money… I doubt they were paid $35 million upfront, but I bet both Pitt and Clooney had generous backend deals which were contingent on, you know, a wide theatrical release. Maybe $35 million each was what they would have gotten if the film crossed $200 million at the box office. But I will never underestimate how much money gets thrown at mediocre white guys in Hollywood, so I wonder if George is playing a bit fast and loose with those salary details.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.