If he’s been used to anything since he had his first lucky break back in 1998, when he won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay with Matt Damon for Good Will Hunting, it’s more attention due to the ups and downs of his personal life. that for its artistic merits.
The fact that he was, along with his friend, the youngest person in the history of the Academy to win that award, at just 25 years old, did not give him the respect he deserved, particularly when he had already become a huge star thanks to To his role in Armageddon alongside Bruce Willis, comments about his relationship with Gwyneth Paltrow occupied more space in the press than about his work as an actor.
And so it went on over the years: the only talk was about his courtship with Jennifer López, then with Jennifer Garner, his divorce, his problems with alcohol and on the cinematographic level, the resounding failure of Gigli (in Spain it was titled Una dangerous relationship). But despite the rumors, Ben Affleck went on to build a terrific career as an actor and an even better one as a director.
The Oscar winner for Best Picture for Argo in 2012 (which also garnered two other gold statuettes and four nominations) is getting ready to release his fourth film as a director, Air, which hits theaters today and then on Amazon Prime. The film tells how Nike managed to become one of the most important sports shoe companies when in 1984 it convinced the promising Michael Jordan to sign an exclusive contract with them.
Air was produced by the new company Affleck formed with Damon, Artists Equity, and was shot with part of the $100 million fund they obtained from investor RedBid Capital Partners. And it is with this that the Californian raised in Boston sets out to revolutionize how Hollywood works together with his lifelong friend.
Instead of getting even richer by pocketing the difference between the $30 million the movie cost and the undisclosed amount Amazon paid for it (although it is known to have spent $7 million of that currency to show the trailer for the upcoming release during the Super Bowl), Affleck and Damon have made the entire team that participated in the film partners.
Indeed, the number that we may never know was shared with the other cast members, such as Jason Bateman, Viola Davis, Chris Tucker, Chris Messina, Jay Mohr, Barbara Sukowa, Marlon Wayans and Gustaf Skarsgard. But screenwriter Alex Convery, cinematographer Robert Richardson, art director François Audouy and many other technicians also received a percentage of the proceeds.
In a lengthy interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Affleck explained: “These people have an importance in making a movie that most people don’t understand. The idea is to hire the best and tell them that if we manage to create what we propose, they will participate in the profit margin between the cost of the film and the amount in which we sell it. Everyone who participated can say today that they are part of the highest paid technical team in the history of cinema.
Obviously the bet could have gone wrong if the shooting budget had grown more than necessary. “In that case we would have told them that they were going to have to charge much less because they would have to accept what the union sets. But they knew that if they did well, the compensation they were going to receive was going to be galactic,†he explained.
