Robert Downey Jr. plays billionaire Tony Stark (Iron Man’s not-at-all secret identity) in the Marvel Studios movies, and he’s looking to make some pretty good money himself as a result of the phenomenal box office success of Avengers.
The Hollywood Reporter cites “multiple knowledgeable sources” that RDJ is looking to take home $50 million from the picture, which includes back-end compensation and bonuses. After the success of the first Iron Man, Downey’s reps negotiated a deal where he would make a percentage of the profits from any Marvel movie where he plays the character — with The Hollywood Reporter says could be as high as 5 to 7 percent, though no concrete numbers are publicly known.
As far as the rest of the cast, THR’s sources say that Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Jeremy Renner and Mark Ruffalo will all make about $2 to $3 million from Avengers, with Samuel L. Jackson and Scarlett Johansson making around twice that. Avengers currently sits at a worldwide total of $1,016,095,436, according to Box Office Mojo.
Synopsis: Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane brings his boundary-pushing brand of humor to the big screen for the first time as writer, director and voice star of Ted. In the live action/CG-animated comedy, he tells the story of John Bennett (Mark Wahlberg), a grown man who must deal with the cherished teddy bear who came to life as the result of a childhood wish...and has refused to leave his side ever since.
Review: If you’re easily offended, then give it a miss. But you will be overlooking this summer’s biggest comedy hit, which has many hilarious moments. The central joke is that Ted may have started off cute, but grows into a disreputable, pot-smoking, lascivious layabout. Seth MacFarlane voices the bear like a Bostonian Danny DeVito, with a string of sexist, racially offensive, scatological gags.
For about half-an-hour, it’s a hoot to hear these things said by a teddy. It’s also fun to hear a plummy-voiced English narrator (Patrick Stewart) with an evident distaste for popular culture and Hollywood garbage like the stuff he’s having to narrate.
Wahlberg proved in The Other Guys he can do comedy, and — though he’s mostly the straight man here — he, too, has his comic moments, especially in a scene where he rattles off a list of white-trash girls’ names. The jolliest scenes are ones where Wahlberg and MacFarlane can forget about plot, and seemingly improvise riffs on their weird buddy-buddy friendship.
The relationship between Wahlberg and Kunis’s characters is far weaker. Kunis has to be a nag, which seems a waste of her natural naughtiness.
And the film is too close to the oeuvre of Judd Apatow in its fear and hatred of women. It turns into just another study of a middle-aged man trying to extend adolescence.
Writer-director MacFarlane made his name with animated TV shows (Family Guy and American Dad!). They favour gags over plot, and this lets him down in a feature-length film.
The plot starts moving in ever more conventional directions. The least gripping part is an attempt to kidnap Ted by a psychopath (Giovanni Ribisi) with a creepy, overweight teenage son (Aedin Mincks), whom Ted tastelessly addresses as Susan Boyle. This thriller sub-plot is charmless, ugly and unfunny.
Its only reason for existence is that it leads to a big chase that belongs in a different movie, and reinforces the suspicion that the screenplay has run out of ideas.
Yet underlying the poor plot and questionable humor is a Spielbergian wonder that stops things being unpleasantly offensive. The bond between man and bear is almost as touching as the one between E.T. and Elliot.
Ted may be a one-joke movie, but the joke is funny, and the special effects are so believable you forget there aren’t such things as garrulous, debauched teddy bears.
There’s nothing fluffy or adorable about Ted, but — at least for the first hour — he’s fun to be with.
