Senior Year Box Set

“Sorry, but I’m out of my depth on all this,” I admitted. “I need to get advice before I decide what I should do.”

Paul started to go into sales mode, but Rita cut him off and kicked him out of his office so we could talk.

“Tell me what you really think of the movie, now that you’ve seen it?” Rita asked.

“It’s okay. It’s not nearly as funny as Bridesmaids or as sappy as The Notebook. I would compare it to Silver Linings Playbook.”

“You do realize that was one of the top recent romantic comedies?” Rita asked.

“How much did it make?”

“About $125 million.”

“Okay, slow down. How much does one of these usually make?” I asked.

“Last year, $27 million was average. The year before that only averaged $10 million.”

“I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t take any pay,” I quipped.

Rita chuckled. She had a good idea of what I was being paid for my next three films. While I wasn’t a twenty-million-dollar man yet, I would command more than was reasonable for a romantic comedy. I might end up being an action star moving forward if the pay was that different.

“It sounds like they’ll be lucky to break even with the proposed budget they have right now. Can we get them to cut back on that and still make money?” I asked.

“The reason Paul has us in here is we own more than the studio does on this one. He has to get our sign-off to move forward,” Rita educated me.

“That shit,” came out before my brain engaged, and then I eyed Rita. “When were you going to clue me in?”

“If this ran off the rails, I would have stopped it. I wanted you to experience for yourself what studios try to do to investors or actors who are working for a percentage of the gross profit. Their goal is to spend as much as they make on paper. That way, they don’t have to pay any profits.”

“What do we do?” I asked.

“Do you trust me to make you money?” Rita asked.

“I don’t know. Should I?”

“Yes. Yes, you should,” Rita said.

“Okay. Do your thing,” I said.

She called Paul in and lowered the boom on him. He’d hoped I thought that a romantic comedy made numbers similar to an action movie. I’m not sure what kind of game he was playing with Rita, but she soon reminded him she wasn’t some babe in the woods.

This situation highlighted the fact that in business, other people were usually not looking out for your best interests. If Paul could have gotten me to put money into marketing the movie, he wouldn’t have hesitated.

Then I threw a monkey wrench into everything. I innocently asked if it might be better to release it next year after my James Bond movie came out and before my Star Academy feature. They said they would have to get back to us on that.