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The LA Times published an article regarding the financial differences between writers that contribute to live action films versus those for animated films. Generally speaking, the lucrative residuals are often available to those pen live-action scripts, but not for those on animation features.
CHEW on one of Hollywood's great open secrets as you try to solve this little word problem: Two screenwriters get jobs on different Mike Myers movies.
Writer One provides him with lines such as: "When you're an overweight child in a society that demands perfection, your sense of right and wrong, fair and unfair, will always be tragically skewed."
Writer Two pens such lines as: "Donkey, you have the right to remain silent. What you lack is the capacity."
In the first instance, Myers speaks his dialogue in the guise of an obese, cannibalistic Scottish henchman named Fat Bastard, and the movie, "Austin Powers in Goldmember," grosses $213 million theatrically, with a healthy life on video.
In the second, the comic actor wisecracks as an obese, cantankerous Scottish ogre named Shrek in "Shrek 2," which takes in $436 million, more than twice as much as "Goldmember," becoming the third-highest-grossing movie of all time. It goes on to sell more than 20 million DVDs in North America alone.
So who earned more money, Writer One or Writer Two?
And … time. Put down your pen. Or mouse, as the case may be.
The answer: Writer One, who supplied Fat Bastard's telling observation.
Why? Because Fat Bastard, though certainly cartoonish, is not an animated character. Both of the writers were likely on equal footing when it came to salaries and bonuses based on box office grosses. But then the films entered a lucrative afterlife on TV, video and DVD — and the "Goldmember" writer cleaned up. The entire story can be read here .
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