Redstone: Movies Need to Be More Expensive
Variety reports that Viacom Chairman-CEO Sumner Redstone has been authorized to greenlight bigger film budgets for Viacom-owned Paramount Pictures. Said Redstone, "The creative community wasn't going to Paramount with movies that cost over $100 million. Now Paramount has hundreds of millions to make the movies they believe in."
We were thinking exactly the same thing! It seems obvious that what kept Paycheck from being a huge hit was a $200 million budget. That way Ben Affleck could have gotten all the support he needed to carry the film: a couple of extra trailers for his Red Sox memorabilia, a solid-gold hot tub to soak in between takes, and a little walking-around money to put towards having J-Lo whacked.