“I don’t remember the numbers involved”: the ‘Animal House’ decision that cost Donald Sutherland millions
It’s easy to look back with the benefit of hindsight and call Animal House a landmark moment in mainstream American comedy, because that’s exactly what it was, but there were plenty of hoops for the filmmakers to jump through before cameras had even started rolling.
A fraternity-set comedy boasting a cast comprised largely of unknowns wasn’t exactly an easy sell to a major studio, and while John Belushi was a known and very popular quantity from Saturday Night Live, he’d never appeared in a movie at the time.
The script went through countless rewrites that gradually saw it evolve from a story focusing on Charles Manson’s early years into what Animal House became; a riotous coming-of-age comedy that thrived on bad taste and had censors, executives, and parents across the United States clutching their pearls.
During pre-production, though, the ensemble was in desperate need of star power. In fact, Universal was adamant that another name performer be added to the roster before it would sign off on the budget. Fortunately, director John Landis had recently made a friend who would fit the bill nicely.
“We had Belushi, but Universal still wanted another star. Now, I had been a flunky on the set of Kelly’s Heroes in Yugoslavia, and Donald Sutherland and I had gotten very friendly. I used to babysit Kiefer,” he explained to Entertainment Weekly. “So I called Donald, and he said, ‘I’ll do it, but I’m not going to do it for scale. They have to pay me up front.'”
The initial offer made to the star – who’d already done Landis a solid when he spent one day working on Kentucky Fried Movie as a favour – was either his day rate of $25,000 or 2% of Animal House‘s total gross. Hardly expecting the raucous comedy to take flight at the box office, Sutherland settled for the former.
In the end, for playing professor Dave Jennings, Sutherland netted $35,000 in total for his contributions to the movie. Unfortunately for him, he missed out on one of the most lucrative paydays of his career when Animal House went on to earn more than $130million from Stateside cinemas alone.
“I don’t remember the numbers involved,” Landis explained. “But had he taken a profit position, he’d have made at least $20million.” That’s not quite how Sutherland remembers it, but either way, he’d have been laughing all the way to the bank had he shown some patience instead of insisting that he get all of his money upfront.
By his calculations, Sutherland would have pocketed $14 million by the time Animal House exited multiplexes nationwide, so it doesn’t really matter which one of the two crunches the numbers. The end result remains the same. At the very least, the actor would have made 400 times more had he displayed a little faith in Animal House to succeed.
