'Crash' stars, director, producers, writers still waiting for their money
When a movie costs $7.5 million to make and takes in $180 million around the world, it seems logical to think that the people who created the film would have become very rich.
At the Independent Spirit Awards in March, Bob Yari stood with other members of the "Crash" production, including Paul Haggis, the film's director, and Matt Dillon, second and third from left.
With “Crash,” this year’s Oscar winner for best picture and last year’s sleeper hit at the box office, that has not been the case.
The movie’s co-writer and director, Paul Haggis, has so far made less than $300,000 on the film, a pittance by Hollywood standards. The eight principal actors in “Crash,” including Sandra Bullock, Matt Dillon and Don Cheadle, have been expecting large checks for months, after deferring their usual fees in exchange for a percentage of the film’s profits. Recently, their representatives say, they each received checks for $19,000.
The wheels of Hollywood’s money machine always turn too slowly for profit participants, players who agree to take a slice of a film’s revenues in lieu of large salaries up front.
But the pace of payments on “Crash” has especially disappointed those who deferred and reduced their salaries in 2004 to get the movie made.
The pressure has led Lionsgate, the domestic distributor of “Crash,” to try to broker a deal to advance payments to Mr. Cheadle and Mr. Haggis, in the interest of maintaining good relations.
That deal has so far faltered and is contributing to tensions between the cast, producers, writers and director of the film on one side, and Bob Yari, the producer and financier in charge of disbursing payments, on the other. In particular, representatives for Mr. Cheadle, a producer and leading actor on the film; Mr. Dillon; Mr. Haggis; and his co-writer Bobby Moresco have been pressing for explanations as to why payments are so slow in coming.
“We haven’t audited, so we can’t tell if it’s right or wrong,” said Peter Dekom, the lawyer for Mr. Haggis and Mark Harris, another producer, who said he had recently hired an accountant to conduct an audit. “But it’s always a big deal when you go out in the world, and you look at the video units sold, the $55 million of domestic box office, the fact that the movie’s doing well overseas, and then you look at the accounting statements, and it’s Hollywood accounting.”
Mr. Yari, a relative newcomer to Hollywood — “Crash” was his first major hit — said he was aware of the dissatisfaction, but that he was completely up to date on payments.
“They have been correctly paid,” he said in a recent interview. “They will be paid more. This is the process. We’ve done everything aboveboard. If we wanted to not pay people and have them sue us, we wouldn’t pay them at all.”
Mr. Yari said that monies collected from Lionsgate went into a fund before being disbursed, further delaying payment to profit participants, and that little money had come in from foreign distributors, though the film long ago ended most of its theatrical runs. He also said that Lionsgate, which has so far paid him slightly more than $10 million, owes him another $10 million. A Lionsgate executive said that a large sum was expected in the fall when the studio’s pay-television deal with Showtime yields revenues.
Documents show, and the principals’ representatives say, that so far none of the profit participants has received more than a low six-figure sum for their work. Moreover, Mr. Haggis and Mr. Moresco were both in dire financial straits when they made the movie in 2004, but deferred their salaries — about $94,000 and $47,000, respectively — to gain approval to move ahead on the film. The deferred salaries were paid in the middle of 2005, after the film broke even, and the money made its way through the accounting system.
But by the time the Academy Awards rolled around in early March, Mr. Moresco and his wife, Barbara, for example, were still short of cash, living in a rented house in Burbank, Calif. Mr. Moresco and Mr. Haggis both declined to comment for this article.
“Crash” has taken in $55 million at the domestic box office and $39 million in foreign box office sales. It has sold 5 million units — about $85 million worth — of DVD’s.
Mr. Yari raised a large part of the production budget from a German tax fund, the rest from banks and with guarantees for video distribution from DEJ. After seeing the movie at the Toronto International Film Festival in fall 2004, Lionsgate bought all domestic distribution rights for $3.3 million, with premiums added should “Crash” become a hit.
The principal players who deferred and reduced their salaries are due from 2 to 4 percent of Mr. Yari’s profit pool, according to people familiar with the deal. The percentages are tied to tiered benchmarks of the film’s revenues.
Mr. Yari said that payments had been slowed
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