The “big cash payday” Ben Affleck regretted taking in 2001: “Doesn’t sit right with me”
Being rich sounds fucking fantastic, but being famous does not. Unfortunately, in Hollywood, you can’t really have one without the other, which is why Ben Affleck was so miserable for a long time.
He didn’t sign up for being prime tabloid fodder in the early 2000s, but that’s what happens when your other half is Jennifer Lopez, who was much more accustomed to tabloid intrusion and paparazzi obsession than he was. He was just an actor, albeit a very well-known one, and he hated it.
Affleck clearly had his sights set on the A-list, though, having signed on for so many big-budget, mainstream popcorn flicks after Good Will Hunting. When they worked, they worked, with Armageddon becoming the highest-grossing release of 1998, but the downside was that the rest were crap.
Pearl Harbor made money, but it was trashed by critics, The Sum of All Fears didn’t bring anything new to the Jack Ryan franchise and failed to get a sequel, Daredevil haunted the star so much that he agreed to play Batman a decade later to redeem himself, and when asked why he starred in John Woo’s Paycheck, his honest response was, “The clue’s in the title.”
However, none of them can hold a candle to Gigli. The winner of six Razzies, including ‘Worst Picture’ and ‘Worst Actor’ for Affleck, the so-called comedy was so bad that director Martin Brest upped and disappeared from the industry entirely, and he still can’t bring himself to refer to the movie by name.
Most of the scorn that was thrown in the picture’s direction was based on the egocentric notion of Affleck and Lopez shoehorning themselves into top billing in a $75 million movie to capitalise on the headlines generated by their offscreen romance. That wasn’t quite the case, since Halle Berry was the first actor to sign on for the female lead, but scheduling conflicts with X-Men 2 caused her to drop out.
In late 2001, Affleck and Lopez were confirmed as the stars, with production getting underway in December 2001, along with the confirmation that he’d be pocketing $12.5 million for his troubles, with the pay gap not quite as egregious as it’s often been, considering the latter netted $12 million upfront.
“I got a big cash payday for that,” the Academy Award-winning screenwriter admitted. “Well, it doesn’t feel right in retrospect, because they lost money. It wasn’t perhaps the biggest money-losing movie in history, even though it was the most famous bomb in history, perhaps. Nonetheless, that doesn’t sit right with me.”
He’s right; Gigli did lose money. A metric fuck-ton of it, no less. The horrendous crime caper didn’t even recoup 10% of its budget at the box office, and by the time the dust had settled, it was estimated to have been over $75 million in the red. He got off with an eight-figure fee, and as much as that doesn’t sit right with him, spare a thought for the daft bastards who paid to see it in the cinema.
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