STAN FREBERG HERE...High Priced Movie Stars' Salaries
Stan Freberg here. Have you checked out movie stars' salaries lately? Sylvester Stallone has made a three-picture deal with Universal for 60 million, above and beyond the cost of the movies. Where will all this inflation stop? More on all that, after this. [:60 SPOT BREAK]
Freberg here. For a minute, when I saw these mega-figures, I thought somebody was talking about the yearly budgets of various foreign countries. No, it's just the latest pumped-up salaries of your average movie stars.
Once Columbia Pictures, a division of Sony, had made the multi-million dollar deal to star comedian Jim Carrey in the movie "The Cable Guy," the next movie star wasn't about to be outdone. And he wasn't.
Universal Pictures struck a three-picture deal with Sylvester Stallone for 60 million. Amazing, when you consider that great movie stars from the golden age of Hollywood never made anything close to that.
Consider a terrific actor like Clark Gable: for several films, he most likely wasn't paid, say, 5 million--about the price that Charlie Sheen makes for one picture.
And Marilyn Monroe? At her height of stardom, she only made a fraction of the $13,000,000 Demi Moore now gets per picture. In fact, after her death, Marilyn is probably worth more from the cottage industry that has sprung up from licensing her name and picture, than she was when she was alive.
And Stallone takes home a $60,000,000 paycheck for three pictures. Probably more than the yearly budget of Uruguay.
Stan Freberg here.
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