Considering the first raunchy weekend made nearly half a billion dollars, a sequel to THE HANGOVER was a foregone conclusion.
A follow-up has actually been in the works before the first even hit screens (Warner Bros. wisely asked director Todd Phillips to start a sequel script as soon as they saw early test scores), and the cast has all been mentioning it and shuffling schedules, but the main factor keeping it from the starting line was, unsurprisingly, a small matter of fees.
See, THE HANGOVER’s three main amnesiacs each only made a few hundred grand each to star in the film, but are now obviously worth much more. Deadline says that after some suit wrangling, Bradley Cooper, Zack Galifianakis and Ed Helms got a bump to around $5 million each, while Phillips will get $10 and another big chunk of the backend. No word on Justin Bartha’s upscaled pay grade, or if he’ll have to spend the sequel mostly missing in action.
Of course, the studio is essentially trying to rebottle the lightning, since nobody ever could have predicted the wild success of the original, not even the filmmaker (who was so confident in his cast that he relinquishing his paycheck to keep them, and instead became an investment partner on the project… and ended up with around $50 million in his pocket).
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