George Clooney To Hedge Fund Honcho Daniel Loeb: Stop Spreading Fear At Sony

“After we wrapped The Ides Of March, we were going through our slate to find what’s next and I asked Grant, what do we have that is not so cynical, and not questioning the rights and wrongs of the world,” Clooney said. “He said, we don’t have anything like that. But he’d read this book The Monuments Men at the airport. We thought it could be a really great old fashioned number where you put a gang together to go after the greatest art archives in the world, these six million pieces stolen by Hitler, who serves as the ultimate bad guy. It was an untold story of World War II, and those don’t come around often. We pitched it to Sony and they came aboard right away, and everything along the way went smoothly, which never happens. It will come out two years after we first pitched it.”

The film has a $75 million budget, and Clooney said it came in $5 million under and five days early. “That means more money for music and CGI, because in post you always get surprised,” he said. There was plenty of good will on the set, and even pranks that are part and parcel of movie sets where Clooney and Damon dwell together.

“Matt was rushing to lose weight, and I’d have the wardrobe people take in his uniform every day, so that no matter how much he was losing, the clothes felt tight on him,” Clooney said. “There was a real family feeling. I have known John Goodman since I was the seventh banana on Roseanne and to have him come over, and to work for the first time with Bill Murray, who’s a close friend, and Cate and Matt, was incredible. Jean Dujardin was great. I’d only met him at awards shows, when I told him early on that he might win the Oscar for The Artist if he learned English, which maybe I shouldn’t have said [Clooney lost to Dujardin for his perf in The Descendants]. Matt, Bill and John would often come to the set even when they weren’t shooting and when we had a snowstorm, they were right there, picking up camera cases and helping to move craft services.”

Even though Clooney acknowledges that $75 million is generous for a studio-made film that isn’t based on a comic book, he feels they got a lot of bang for the buck with star power and staging a period film in Europe. Part of that is because he hasn’t taken an upfront salary forever, something that has become commonplace in the business and is evidence that Loeb’s criticism of fiscal irresponsibility at Sony isn’t recognizing the whole picture.

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