Elizabeth Banks: It’s Getting Harder to Make Money in Hollywood

There’s an awful lot of bitterness in many comments here. Let’s consider the distribution of the profit from films, who gets what for their involvement and investment, and giving financial credit where financial credit is due. I’m a working guy doing what I do, and I make a decent salary. I don’t begrudge workers in other fields that make (in this case, substantially) more. However, I do begrudge CEO’s of pharmaceuticals and their bonuses when we are forced to buy their products at their prices, as they also can afford to blanket us with advertising. The film industry makes billions for entertaining us (for better...), and actors, directors, writers et al should have the benefit of those profits. We choose to see their movies and watch their shows. We willingly fork over our money, weekend after weekend. Ms. Banks was not “whining,” or saying “boo-hoo” about her personal state, but about an industry and its relationship to the workers that make that industry what it is. I think she should be applauded for this. In this country, where people are increasingly demeaning other people for pretty much everything they are not, we should not be so easily judgmental about someone arguing for her craft’s worth.

I was in a commercial for an eyewear company. Rather than hire any talent, they hired a shell to run a contest for aspiring filmmakers to submit an entry, and the winner got less than $10,000 and the honor of being chosen. So, they got a professional commercial for next to nothing, then they ran it daily for three years. A disgusting practice. And zero benefit to the talent. The shell company disappeared due to dishonest practices, then popped up again with another name, doing the same exact thing.

oh, boo hoo. hollywood is overpaid & mostly not worth what they're making.

Boo-hoo! It's not as easy to make 20 million today as it used to be back in the day, as the Hollwood community was comfortably used to. Begging for the comment: I'm so sorry for you, serial millionaires.

I am 44 years old, am college educated with a 4.0 GPA, and have been working my butt off for 34 years of my miserable life. The last 20 years for an average of 50 hours a week or more. In that time, I have still not made ONE million dollars in TOTAL in my life (and I am one of the successful ones). I have another 20 years at least of hard work before I enter a hopeless and dim and possibly impoverished retirement. You will have to forgive me if I say that I could care less that these people are not getting 100 million paydays anymore for the (mostly, but not always) garbage they produce.

“Everything is now being scrutinized so deeply that it’s getting harder and harder to get these deals done,” said Banks, who is next directing “Charlie’s Angels” for Sony. They're making another movie rehash of a semi-bad 70's show. That might be part of the problem.

Hah! I'm lucky to find a movie I would go to see at my local multi-screen outlet. I mean, 17 screens and I can't find one which would get me into the car and drive to see it, except around the end of the year, when all the Oscar hopefuls are released. For the most part, I'm relegated to watching a couple of wood ducks copulate on some TV nature documentary or, something like Downton Abbey or Doc Martin, both made in the UK.

Elizabeth Banks' comments on salaries really strike me as tone deaf. You used to be able to pay off your student debt by making a commercial? Yes, I'm sure it was great to be paid thousands of dollars for what - one day's work? You should be thanking your lucky stars that there was ever a time when someone got paid so disproportionately to her abilities. What she should be asking herself is what to do about the people at the end of the pay scales (crew, etc.) as opposed to propping up the salaries at the top tier. But I doubt she's going to lower her own paycheck at the expense of these people she seems to care so much about.

The paychecks out in LaLaLand are getting smaller, because no one is getting off the couch to go see the latest PC inclusivity fest coming out from there right now. Hollywood should have learned with the huge 200+million loss of Wrinkle in Time that ‘inclusivity’ ‘diversity’ ‘minority’ and all those words democrats use to get votes, do not move the 80% of us who care for a good movie, not the latest PC fest showing at the movies. I used to go out to see Imax 3d movies a lot, last one I did was Alita, and have not bothered with any of the offerings since. Netflix and HBO are offering movies I would have gone to see at the AMC or Regal on 42nd, and that is why I keep those subscriptions alive. But when I pass the movies every day on my way to work, there is nothing in there that makes me want to stop and catch a movie.

Gee I feel so sorry re the headline. You mean Hollywood execs/other professionals can't make millions and billions of dollars on gratuitous violence, over the top special effects and horribly acted, written, directed and produced films? I feel for them.

Some of Ms. Banks comments are very reminiscent of comments from daily print news media insiders ten or fifteen years ago. Hopefully the entertainment media industry will see and understand better what adjustments they must make in the face of a changing industry landscape. The business model is changing.

"I arrived in Hollywood at the very end of the heyday of big movie stars, and you hear through the grapevine about things like Keanu Reeves’s “Matrix” deal [he reportedly made more than $100 million through that deal]. The idea of those types of deals happening now? It’s much harder. Every negotiation is much harder." Call me crazy but uh, yeah, I'm fine with it being hard for actors or actresses to get $100 million movie deals. A lot of people are struggling throughout the world with income inequality being as extreme as it is, I don't think Elizabeth Banks is one of them.

I love Elizabeth Banks! She always makes me laugh, sometimes just with the expression on her face. She should be in more movies and TV shows, and they should pay her more.