Posted in: HBO, Legendary, Movies, Warner Bros | Tagged: hbo max, legendary, movies, Warner Bros

Gal Gadot, Patty Jenkins Reportedly Got $10M+ to Praise HBO Max Deal

And an already messy deal continues to get messier. It's starting to look like Warner Bros. made the HBO Max decision while trying to keep as many people out of the loop as possible, which is not ending well for them. Legendary is already reportedly looking into legal action because Warner Bros. used Dune and Godzilla vs. Kong as big pushers for the HBO Max deal, but Legendary only knew about the move about ninety minutes before it happened. It sounds like that was the case across the board, and people are not happy. According to a new report by The New York Times, this thing is going to get uglier. In the days leading up to the announcement that Wonder Woman 1984 would be released on HBO Max and theaters, Warner Bros. worked behind the scenes with star Gal Gadot, director Patty Jenkins, producer Charles Roven along with others "needed to be paid what they most likely would have received had the sequel been released in a traditional manner (an exclusive run in theaters before arriving online) and not during the height of a pandemic. After all, that was what they signed up for, and Warner Bros. and HBO Max, its corporate sibling, wanted their help in promoting the film, did they not?" To get that kind of support, these key players reportedly received more than $10 million each and put the wheels in motion for the first movie to get a simultaneous streaming and theatrical release.

However, the massive move to put the entire 2021 slate in the same veins was not made with the kind of negotiation that Gadot, Jenkins, and the Wonder Woman 1984 team got. Warner Bros. apparently didn't want to deal with the blowback from stars or directors or a leak, "WarnerMedia kept the major agencies and talent management companies in the dark until roughly 90 minutes before issuing a news release. Even some Warner Bros. executives had little warning." There are major movies coming out with massive stars next year, and the question is, are they going to get the same deal that Gadot or Jenkins just got from Warner Bros.? It seems unlikely now that the ink is already dry when it comes to these movies getting released on HBO Max, so they have no negotiation power like Gadot and Jenkins did. There are rumors of a boycott by the Director's Guild of America, and people are reportedly cheekily referring to Warner Bros. as "Former Bros."

As always, this all comes down to contracts, unions, and how much people get paid at the end of the day, as it always does in Hollywood. There is a two-tier system of getting paid for a movie; the upfront payment for doing the movie and the residuals coming in from ticket sales. The contracts that people like Margot Robbie for The Suicide Squad signed, for example, didn't include anything about what kind of residuals she would get if the movie did a hybrid release model. One of the reasons that Warner Bros. likely kept everyone in the dark is because they didn't want to deal with seventeen movies worth of cast and crew coming in to demand a new contract for this hybrid model. Warner Bros. and HBO Max have made this whole thing a lot messier than it needed to be by being extremely cloak and dagger about the whole thing.

So, where does that leave us now? Well, in sort of a weird spot. You already have someone like Christopher Nolan coming out against the Warner Bros. and HBO Max deal, and he is a director that the studio has worked hard to keep happy for many years. There is the rumored possible litigation with Legendary, who, as we reported earlier, very much have a leg to stand on when it comes to demanding that Dune or Godzilla vs. Kong aren't part of this move. In an effort to try and curb scandal, Warner Bros. might have just pissed off even more people in the end. All of this being said, the movie theater is the last place we should be going right now. The pandemic is worse than ever, and the decision to give Wonder Woman 1984 a hybrid release isn't a bad thing. If anything, the movie shouldn't be in theaters at all. However, the willingness to throw the entire 2021 slate on streaming? Well, it's not looking like it's going to work out for everyone.

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