Bruce Willis made 120 million off the Sixth Sense.
204 million, factoring inflation since 1999.
Bruce Willis holds the record as the highest paid actor for a single role in history, but it all happened, due to a bunch of people royally screwing up.
First up, how the Sixth Sense originally was made.
M Night Shyamalan wrote the script and pitched it to Disney, where the president of production at the time named David Vogel paid 3 million dollars for it and gave Shyamalan the rights to direct in the contract.
The only problem was David Vogel paid Shyamalan without permission from higher ups at Disney and left the company over it.
Sixth Sense in itself had a few big problems for Disney.
- The concept didn’t fit their brand. Disney has never directly under their brand released an rated R movie, which Sixth Sense didn’t end up being, but they were worried would end up as.
- Sixth Sense has been accused for decades of being a ripoff of a Nickelodeon series called “Are You Afraid Of The Dark”, which was a Twilight Zone type series for kids, which in 1994 had an episode titled “The Tale of the Dream Girl” that had the same plot.
M Night has only addressed this one time in 2017, but it was apparently a concern for Disney even in the late 90s.
The result was Disney sold Sixth Sense to SpyGlass for the promise it’d make the movie within three years and pay Disney a 12.5% royalty.
That was the mess up of Sixth Sense, but what’s even crazier is how Bruce Willis got involved.
Bruce Willis in the late 90s was involved in making a movie for Disney called Broadway Brawler, which never ended up getting made.
- Spent two years in pre production.
- The 28 million dollar budget was wasted before filming.
- They requested 20 million more, but were rejected.
Bruce Willis was blamed for this, because he was producer as well as lead actor.
Disney was going to sue him, but instead, he worked out a three picture deal with the studio, to do movies at a lower rate.
The first was a Michael Bay movie called Armageddon, which Willis took a 80% pay cut on what he was previously making, pulling in 3 million for it.
Which was a good deal for Disney, which produced it under their subsidiary Buena Vista Pictures and the movie made 550 million on a budget of 140m.
Willis did that movie as well as Disney’s the Kid.
For the Sixth Sense, that was the second film in the deal, but due to Armageddon going well, he got a noticeably better deal.
He had a royalty of 15%, which was higher than what Disney was making off the movie.
He also received 14 million dollars up front as his advanced, which was 35% of the budget for the entire movie at 40 million.
Bruce Willis did it and a film he never wanted or planned on doing, managed to make over 600 million at the box.
Bruce Willis off a film he made to avoid being sued for 17 million, for losing 28 million made 120 million, which would be 204 million today.
- Higher than the 100 million Will Smith made for Men in Black 3.
- Higher than the 75 million Robert Downy Jr made for Avengers Endgame.
- More money than what Dwayne Johnson would be paid for eight movies at his current rate.
All due to an executive at Disney screwing up and Bruce Willis not being the best producer.
I’m writing this due to me feeling pretty upset about hearing the news yesterday on his health, but thought this could remind everyone on what a badass he is.