Bruce

Though the article is from November of 2006, I thought I'd post it anyways.



The new deal, with Universal Pictures, was thrashed out after Baron Cohen's latest film - Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan - proved box office gold, taking £60 million worldwide since its launch just two weeks ago.

For 35-year-old Baron Cohen to earn his £16 million from the new film Bruno, it will only have to take the same amount over its entire worldwide run over a number of months.

Universal successfully outbid DreamWorks, Sony Pictures, 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros who were also said to have been clamouring to make the movie, inspired by the vast amount of publicity Borat received in the US before it even opened.
Commenting on the deal, analysts at Forbes - which compiles America's rich list - said: 'Cohen could easily take home north of £16 million, including his advance and backend.

'That puts him in the elite ranks of Hollywood's biggest comedians and a likely candidate for inclusion in the Forbes Celebrity 100.'
The wage is many millions more than seasoned British Oscar-winners such as Sean Connery, Antony Hopkins and Michael Caine have ever been paid for a single movie.

And it by far eclipses the earning power of the likes of Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe and Pirates of the Caribbean stars Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom who are all tied up in the two most profitable film franchises in recent years.

It also puts Baron Cohen in the highest echelons of America's top-earning movie stars.

Among America's top comic movie actors, only the likes of Jim Carrey (who earned £13 million for Bruce Almighty), Mike Myers (who earned £13 million plus 21 per cent of gross earnings for Austin Powers in Goldmember) and Eddie Murphy (who earned £11 million and a 20 per cent share of takings for Nutty Professor II) compare.

Bruno is Baron Cohen's latest creation. The outrageously camp character, who brands himself 'the voice of Austrian youth TV', first appeared on Borat's Television Programme in the UK and on the US version of Da Ali G Show.

On his section, called 'Funkyzeit mit Bruno' (Funkytime with Bruno), he duped fashionistas into making ridiculous and contradictory statements.

He duped one fashion designer into condemning the unfashionable to concentration camps and led a casting director into saying that Osama bin Laden was 'cool' and 'fashionable'.
He encourages his subjects to contradict themselves, and he once convinced a fashion boutique owner to wrongly claim Madonna was one of her clients after saying nobody could prove it either way.

Signing the deal completes a remarkable hat-trick for the British comedian, who lives in north London with fiancee, the actress Isla Fisher.

His career took off after he appeared eight years ago on Channel A's Eleven O'Clock Show. Before the Borat film, Baron Cohen made his cinema debut in 2002 with Ali G Indahouse.

Top Twenty

1. Sacha Baron Cohen £16+ million
2. Ewan McGregor £10m
3. Keira Knightley £10m
4. Orlando Bloom £8m
5. Sir Ian McKellen £8m
6. Hugh Grant £8m
7. Ralph Fiennes £7m
8. Catherine Zeta-Jones £6m
9. Daniel Radcliffe £6m
10. Sean Connery £6m
11. Anthony Hopkins £5m
12. Patrick Stewart £5m
13. Jude Law £4m
14. Kate Winslet £4m
15. Liam Neeson £4m
16. Kate Beckinsale £4m
17. Rachel Weisz £3m
18. Daniel Craig £2m
19. Dame Judi Dench £2m
20. Dame Helen Mirren £1.5m


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Hypersonic

Interesting. I am amused that the British are so obsessed with the success of there fellow country men and women when all of them made their fortunes in the United States ...not in good old "Blighty" ...as Jeremy Clarkson often calls England.

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