The sexual harassment scandals rippling through Hollywood have led to the loss of scores of jobs, with the actions of alleged abusers leading to the shutdown or suspension of many productions.
Director Ridley Scott is in the midst of reshoots on the fact-based drama about the kidnapping of a young John Paul Getty III. Christopher Plummer has taken the place of Kevin Spacey, who was accused of sexual misconduct by several men, as family patriarch J. Paul Getty. Wahlberg plays an ex-CIA officer who attempts to free the hostage.
The accusations several weeks ago prompted Scott, producer-financier Imperative Entertainment and distributor Sony Pictures to recast the movie with Plummer rather than release it with Spacey. As the cast was called in for the reshoots — including Michelle Williams as the kidnapped boy’s mother — the performers agreed to be paid more modestly for their work, in what the person said was a figure in the hundreds of thousands of dollars or less for Williams, Plummer and other actors. But Wahlberg insisted on, and received, a much higher sum for the 10 days of shooting.
Imperative is financing the reshoots and new postproduction work, which combined with new marketing materials will cost as much as $10 million, according to a person close to the production who was not authorized to speak about it publicly. In addition to star salaries, a full crew had to be hired on short notice. Representatives for Wahlberg, Sony and Imperative did not provide a comment for this report.
Wahlberg, along with manager Stephen Levinson and agency WME, have a reputation in Hollywood for driving a tough bargain. The star was on the other side of that actor-producer salary divide when he and Levinson, while producing the “Entourage” movie, engaged in a feud over compensation for the ensemble cast that spilled into public view.
And filmmaker J.C. Chandor fell off the “Deepwater Horizon” film, starring Wahlberg, during development because the star’s pay requirements ate up too large a share of the budget for the director to feel comfortable proceeding with the film, according to a person familiar with that project who did not want to speak about it publicly for fear of jeopardizing relationships.
In August, Forbes named Wahlberg the highest-paid actor of the year, calculating his pretax and pre-fee earnings at $68 million, and as a general matter he commands a higher salary than many of his co-stars because he is regarded as a box-office draw.
Still, a sexual harassment scandal resulting in a substantially higher paycheck for a male star compared with a female star could create the kind of negative optics that many in Hollywood have sought to avoid in the wake of sexual-misconduct scandals involving Harvey Weinstein and others.
“All the Money in the World” is scheduled for wide release on Dec. 22. It will be followed early next year by “Trust,” Danny Boyle’s FX television series about the same incident.