George Clooney Denies $35M Pay For 'Wolfs'

by the way there's a really good reporter Nicole Sperling uh for the New York Times she wrote a interesting article about it um and whatever her Source was for our salary so I hadn't read the New York Times article that George made a point of mentioning during the press conference for his film Wolves at the Venice Film Festival on Sunday but I knew the salary figure was that he was referring to $35 million each for George and Brad yeah because that had been all over Twitter the past week since the article had been published it's millions and millions and millions of dollars less than what was reported after then reading the New York Times article and seeing what a minor detail the salary mention was it was clear that George wasn't correcting it just because it was wrong it was because you know the public had really zeroed in in that detail and he was facing a lot of scrutiny over it you're a man who can fix things and I I only saying that because I think it's bad for our industry if that's what people think is the standard Bearer for salaries I think that's a terrible it'll make it impossible to to to make films my Spidey Sense told me that something was off here but yeah I just started to gather the info on the backstory of wolves to fill out the segment and then suddenly $35 million didn't seem that far off in 2021 George and Brad as writers sorry as actors and producers got together with writer director John Watt who'd written a script and they went to the Studios studios and said here's the movie we can make for you we propos uh a budget of you know x amount of dollars and George's George and Brad's ask as actors would have been included in that Brad had signed on for bullet train for $20 million Georgia just broke her the deal to get $20 million for Ticket To Paradise because he sold that as a reunion with Julia Roberts so this being a package deal with George and Brad reuniting in an Oceans 11 Style movie their ask was easily 25 the only course of action is for you to work together to clean up this mess no but George and Brad didn't just pitch us the one Studio they went to multiple Studios and multiple Studios were interested and it started a bidding war so yeah all the studios and streamers were willing to you know give them whatever they asked for the budget let's say was $70 million but then they started going above that in the bidding war so 75 80 whatever was like more than what their ask was so Apple won the bidding a which is not a surprise because they have money to burn we don't know how much Apple paid but it was more than what yeah George and Brad proposed they would need to make the movie and pay everybody it's not how I work this is not how I work so they got more than their ask as actors plus they were acting as producers so they get a salary for that too so yeah now we're into 253 we're not far off from $35 million there's an art to this you may not realize I grew up cutting Tobacco on a tobacco farm for $3.30 an hour and uh so this is all just icing on the cake for me and that's not where the pr stops during the press conference several journalists asked about um Apple's decision to or revers their decision to having a full theatrical run for this movie and only give the film a week of limited release before goes on Apple TV George's answer to this question cracked the whole thing wide open for me would you like to have seen it do a global release yeah we would we would have liked that we we wanted it no you didn't come on George don't try to fool me here yeah if you wanted a theatrical release you wouldn't have accepted Apple's offer you would have accepted one of the studios offer because they would have released it theatrically uh it's just cash I think money will do yeah money will break all arguments Just for kicks I then looked up where Apple TV plus was at in the fall 2021 when this deal was made they had released seven movies at that point none of the have gotten theatrical release so there's no way you signed a deal with Apple thinking okay yeah they'll definitely give us a theatrical release yes we wanted it to be released uh we've had some bumps along the way that happens and yeah as Nicole's article reports Apple's been you know altering their plan in terms of like going straight to streaming or maybe releasing something in theaters I looked when they started releasing things in theaters and it was uh fall of 20122 and yeah they release a film for week in theaters and then it goes to Apple TV plus um the only time that they varied from that since then is with uh Argy and Napoleon that didn't really work for them that well so now they've gone back to the week uh week uh theater release and then straight streaming that's what Matt demon the instigators did last month it was in theaters for a week then it went to Apple TV plus and wolves is about to follow that same pattern all that happened without you know any Financial involvement of George and Brad we we wanted it that's why Brad and I you know gave some uh some of our salary back even that doesn't make sense because I mean if you had done that and then just last month they rened on that idea they would have violated the agreement that you made with them so she'd be suing them you wouldn't be saying oh well they decided not to do it it's it's a it is a bummer of course it's a bummer but on the other hand a lot of people are going to see the film George is obviously skewing things a little bit I think why he's doing it is because um you know in 2021 the sentiment was we don't know if movie theaters is even going to be around like actors just like you know making the biggest profit that they could we're all in this industry and we're trying to find our way postco and everything else the top gun Maverick came out in May 2022 which of course Tom Cruz famously held out from sending it to streaming and yeah Saved movie theaters I guess and now very much the mentality over the last year has been you know support movie theaters we are getting a release in the you know a few I think a few hundred theaters so we're getting a release but yeah it would have been nicer to have a a wide release I wish you just be honest George come on get I'm done I don't even know what to say I'm so exhausted that's what I'm saying bye you want to be able to continue working in this uh in in this industry that we love so