Jim Carrey Deal — Unmasked
Jim Carrey, the first movie star ever to command a salary of $20 million per picture, has signed a deal with Warner Bros. in which he will receive no upfront cash and no percentage of the gross for the upcoming film Yes Man.
Instead, he will receive a so-called cash-break deal on 36.2 percent of the back end — that is, the amount the studio holds onto after it recovers its production, prints and advertising costs.
In her Deadline Hollywood blog, writer Nikki Finke remarks that this “could just turn out to be the worst talent deal ever” for a major star.
“The conventional wisdom in Hollywood is always to get as much fixed compensation as you can upfront because you’re never going to see the back end thanks to the studios’ creative accounting,” Finke wrote.
She quoted one unnamed talent manager as saying, “Let me put it this way: if his reps were a hospital, they would be shut down for malpractice. This is a new kind of Hollywood stupid.”
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