The most expensive movie script of all time
When you consider how a movie’s budget is broken down, usually your first thought is for the Hollywood stars like Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and Timothée Chalamet, who request vast budgets for their appearances, or maybe the special effects that are needed to bring your favourite blockbusters to life. Indeed, rarely do you think of the cost studios pay to acquire a promising screenplay.
Screenwriters are the somewhat forgotten heroes of the filmmaking process, creating the skeleton from which a producer and director can construct the body, style and shape. The greatest writers in cinema history, including Aaron Sorkin, Billy Wilder, Charlie Kaufman, Paul Thomas Anderson and Stanley Kubrick, have mastered the art of the screenplay, creating timeless pieces of written art that stand on their own as impressive artefacts.
But, whilst screenplays from these aforementioned names may be seen as the very best, they are not among the most expensive in the industry.
Once enough hype has been built-up for a script, a writer can charge millions to get it bought by producers, resulting in Brian Helgeland getting $2.5million for his Knights Tale screenplay and Joe Eszterhas receiving a cool $3m for the 1992 mystery thriller Basic Instinct. But even these massive fees don’t compare to the highest-ever amount paid for a screenplay.
Back in 2006, the screenwriting duo of Tony Rossio and Bill Marsili charged $5m for their script for the movie Deja Vu, which would eventually be picked up by Tony Scott.
Telling the story of an A.T.F. agent who joins a mysterious investigation using experimental technologies to find the bomber of a ferry in New Orleans, the movie starred the likes of Denzel Washington, Elle Fanning and Val Kilmer. Earning $180.6m at the box office from a budget of $75m, Deja Vu wasn’t exactly the bonafide financial success that the movie studio was hoping for, however.
The script was purchased by the influential American producer Jerry Bruckheimer, the same mind behind such hits as Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl and Top Gun: Maverick, who later brought Washington and Scott onboard. But, screenwriter Tony Rossio wasn’t so happy with the choice of filmmaker Tony Scott, believing that he wasn’t right for the sci-fi flick.
“Completely the wrong choice,” he stated in a past column, “In that Tony had stated he had no interest in making a science fiction film, and suggested the time travel aspect be dumped…My hope was that we had a screenplay that could be the next Sixth Sense. Tony wanted to make just another also-ran surveillance film”.
Indeed, the script was initially supposed to be a time travel epic, telling the story of a cop who uses a time travel surveillance technique to discover how a victim was murdered seven days later, simultaneously falling in love with the target.
There’s no knowing how well the film would have done if the studio had just trusted the script they spent so much money acquiring.
