Getting Wilder by the Minute

An agent put the figure at $150 million. A studio executive insisted, quite definitively, that the number was $175 million. Over lunch, a producer volunteered, in a conspiratorial hiss, “I’ve heard it’s at $200 million and counting.”

The buzz in Hollywood has been deafening: “Wild Wild West” is way, way over budget. Due in theaters July 2, Warner Bros.’ big-screen remake of the popular ‘60s TV show stars Will Smith and Kevin Kline as government agents trying to stop an assassin from killing President Ulysses S. Grant.

The film’s director, Barry Sonnenfeld, says rumors about “Wild West” are unrelated to reality--”There are probably 10 or 15 movies that will cost more than ‘Wild Wild West’ this year”--but that may be beside the point. In Hollywood, whispering about a rival’s budget excess has become a high-stakes battle of truth or dare filled with as much innuendo, lies and disinformation as any Washington political scandal.

Just as this year’s Academy Awards were marred by the spectacle of Oscar hopefuls slinging mud at rival films, the summer-movie season in recent years has been punctuated by movie budget exposes fed by industry insiders trashing their rivals’ high-profile films.

“Once the press puts a negative spin on your movie, the audience starts to believe it can’t be any good,” says “Waterworld” producer Larry Gordon, whose film was sunk by a tidal wave of runaway-budget publicity in 1995. “When the audience thinks you’re being irresponsible and throwing away huge sums of money, it makes people angry with the movie. And once they’re angry, either they won’t like it or they won’t even go see it.”

“Wild Wild West” had been viewed as one of the summer’s most potent box-office behemoths, especially after the success of Smith and Sonnenfeld’s last joint effort, the 1997 summer blockbuster “Men in Black.” But in recent weeks the film’s image has been tarnished by a lackluster reaction to its coming-attraction trailer, a raft of rumors about it exceeding its $105-million budget and the news that Sonnenfeld was planning to shoot four new scenes for the film after a less-than-stellar test screening.

According to several people who worked on the film, the movie went as many as four weeks behind schedule, but, as one crew member put it, “it was hardly an out-of-control picture.” Sonnenfeld, who begins 10 days of additional shooting this week, says the movie only went two weeks over its initial 100-day schedule and is not exactly a Hollywood money pit.

“The numbers people are telling you, whether it’s $175 million or $200 million, are just insane,” he says. “I’d be shocked if we were even 10% over budget. This is a non-story. . . . Why don’t you ask someone about ‘Star Wars?’ I promise you that it costs more than my movie.”

In fact, while most industry gossip has focused on “Wild Wild West,” it is not the only high-profile movie with budget difficulties this year. “Star Wars,” the most hotly anticipated film of the year, has largely escaped scrutiny, even though insiders at 20th Century Fox, which is distributing the film, acknowledge that its budget, originally set at $70 million, has ballooned to at least $125 million.

“Town and Country,” which stars Warren Beatty and Goldie Hawn and is due out this fall from New Line Cinema, is also considerably over budget. After running into script difficulties that caused the film to nearly double its shooting schedule, and shooting a week of additional footage at the end of February, the film’s costs have escalated from an initial $35-million budget to the $80-million range, New Line executives privately admit.

‘Titanic’ the Exception to Public Relations Rule

Since the media began reporting about Hollywood as a business, a host of films, from “Heaven’s Gate” to “Last Action Hero,” have become the magnet for stories about out-of-control budgets. Although “Titanic” was a runaway hit despite innumerable stories about its $200-million budget, it was the exception that proves the rule; it is considered a public-relations disaster for a movie to be viewed as a bloated symbol of Hollywood excess.

“It gets very nasty,” says Gordon. “The image from the negative articles sticks--you can’t change it. ‘Waterworld’ did double the business [overseas] that it did in America because we didn’t have all that negative spin to deal with.”

Wary of having their film become the poster child for Hollywood indulgence, studio executives try to fend off potentially damaging stories with a fog of obfuscation and outright lies. Last fall, the budget of DreamWorks’ “The Prince of Egypt” was the subject of heated debate, with many studio insiders claiming the widely printed figure of $75 million was preposterously low.

However, DreamWorks marketing chief Terry Press says that when reporters started writing that “Prince of Egypt” cost $100 million, studio head Jeffrey Katzenberg “would have a complete breakdown because he felt it was totally wrong.” All along, Katzenberg refused to confirm a specific number. When rival studios began spreading the word that the film cost as much as $150 million, press estimates climbed past the $100-million mark, with reporters assuming the truth was somewhere in between.

“No one in the media believes anything the studios say anymore because the relationship between the press and Hollywood has become this evil circle,” says Press. “The press gets mad when they’re lied to, then the studios get mad when the press prints whatever someone else told them. It’s become an endless merry-go-round of distrust.”

Studios Downplay Film Budget Figures

When Disney’s “Armageddon” came out in July, reporters were told by studio executives that the film was made for roughly $130 million. Now that the film is safely out of the marketplace, top-level Disney executives have acknowledged that the film cost upward of $180 million. Warner Films executives recently told reporters that “The Matrix,” the studio’s current hit, only cost $53 million. But when Joel Silver, the film’s producer, was interviewed in the Hollywood Reporter last week, he placed the film’s cost at “definitely under $70 million.”

Studio executives argue that even when they tell the truth, no one believes them. Fox Filmed Entertainment Chairman Bill Mechanic recalls giving interviews during the uproar over “Titanic” in which he bluntly admitted that the film would cost $200 million. “But even when you’re candid, nobody believes you,” he says. “The reporters started saying it cost $225 million, because they assumed if I told them $200 million, it must really be more.”

The level of paranoia and mistrust over budget figures is so high that in recent weeks two studio chiefs have blamed Disney Chairman Joe Roth for feeding negative reports about “Wild Wild West” and other rival films to the press.

“I don’t talk to reporters about other people’s movies--ever,” Roth angrily responds. “I’ve never bad-mouthed anyone else’s film, and if anyone is telling you that, it’s not the truth and I think it’s unfair to print charges from unnamed sources. Barry Sonnenfeld has two pictures at my studio and I would never wish him any ill. I think ‘Wild Wild West’ is going to be a huge hit.”

Premature Judgment, Sonnenfeld Complains

Roth acknowledges that he recently called Warners co-studio chief Bob Daly to deny rumors that he’d made disparaging remarks about the film. “I told him, ‘We’re friends and I don’t engage in that kind of behavior,’ and he said, ‘Fine,’ and that was it,” Roth explains. “My success doesn’t require someone else’s failure.” (Neither Daly or Warners co-studio chief Terry Semel would comment for this story.)

In this hot-house atmosphere, it is no wonder that Sonnenfeld feels that “Wild West” has been judged guilty without a fair trial. He points to his track record, noting that his previous films as a director, which include “The Addams Family,” “Get Shorty” and “Men in Black,” all came in on budget or within 5%.

“Going over budget is more of a concern to me than it is to the studio,” he says. “As it is, I can’t sleep at night and grind my teeth over the normal responsibilities of making a movie. I’m always cheating myself out of shots I could have used because I didn’t want to go over budget.”

Shooting 10 days of additional footage will have minimal budget impact, he says: “It would be substantial for the Coen brothers, but it’s very insubstantial to our movie.” He also believes it is unfair to assume the worst about his shooting additional scenes after an unimpressive early test screening of the film.

“We spent $4.5 million on computer graphics with ‘Men in Black’ because we felt we needed a better ending for the movie, yet that didn’t mean the movie was in trouble,” he says. “Woody Allen and George Lucas build shooting additional footage into their movie budgets. I’ve done re-shoots or shot additional footage on all my films.”

Sonnenfeld says his films often test poorly in early research screenings, where they’ve been shown without many of the completed effects. “It doesn’t mean anything,” he says. “Warners didn’t want me to do a recruited screening because they know visual-effects films test poorly as a rule, and then it comes out on the Internet that you had a bad screening and journalists start writing about it.”

Sonnenfeld said he’s shooting additional scenes, penned by “3rd Rock From the Sun” writers Bob Kushell and Christine Zander, to “add a few physical comedy set-pieces” to the film. He is also shooting a 30-second, pre-credits teaser scene that had been in the original script, but was never filmed. “I really miss the days of being invisible, when we were under the radar,” he says.

“You know, when Steven Spielberg made ‘Jaws,’ he went 100 days over schedule. But all people knew was that he made an incredible movie. If he’d shot that movie today, it would’ve been huge headlines--’Spielberg Over Budget’!”