Michael Moore, war profiteer
$21 million buys a lot of baseball hats and sweatpants, huh?
Fahrenheit 9/11, now an event, took in more than $228 million in ticket sales worldwide, a record for a documentary, and sold 3 million DVDs, which brought in another $30 million in royalties. After the theaters took their share of the movie’s gross (roughly 50 percent) and distributors deducted the marketing expenses (including prints, advertising, dubbing, and custom clearance) and took their own cut, the net receipts returned to Disney were $78 million.
Disney now had to pay Michael Moore’s profit participation. Under normal circumstances, documentaries rarely, if ever, make profits (especially if distributors charge the usual 33 percent fee). So, when Miramax made the deal for Fahrenheit 9/11, it allowed Moore a generous profit participation—which turned out to be 27 percent of the film’s net receipts. Disney, in honoring this deal, paid Moore a stunning $21 million. Moore never disclosed the amount of his profit participation. When asked about it, the proletarian Moore joked to reporters on a conference call, “I don’t read the contracts.”
What of Disney? After repaying itself $11 million for acquisition costs, it booked a $46 million net profit, which Eisner split between two subsidiaries, the Disney Foundation and Miramax. While it was far less than Disney made on children’s fare such as Finding Nemo, it was not a bad outcome. The Weinstein brothers also made a multimillion-dollar profit. They had a deal with Disney that contractually entitled them to a bonus of between 30 percent and 40 percent of the net profits on any film that they produced—in this case, that came out to about $8 million per brother. (The Weinsteins are now in the process of leaving Miramax.) But Michael Moore had perhaps the happiest ending of all. Not only had he made $21 million, he already had a sequel in preproduction—Fahrenheit 9/11 ½.
I defy anyone to find another person that made more money off the war in Iraq. I mean an individual, not a company. Moore made $21 mil for his pocket. Name someone who made more than that.
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Too bad DrEngine wasn’t around during the BFC days, we went into depth about BFC and how all of it was pretty much cut and pasted together, expecially Heston. I wish the site Bowling for Truth was still up. One trick I can remember if you watch the Heston interview, you will see the clock behind Heston change different times during the interview. You will also see how the whole going to Hestons house, and the aftermath was totally cut and pasted, with tricky camera angles. Do some searches on this site, and find out the truth behind BFC....
It is still up Hagis, Its just the info isn’t on the main page anymore.
I think he knows that stuff, he just doesn’t care because he still buys Moore’s overall narrative that you can’t be defiant about protecting gun rights because innocent people are sometimes murdered by people with using guns.
Just in case flodrive is still lurking around-
I wonder how he feels about his boy Bill Clinton pulling this bonehead caper ? Thnks alot Billy Jeff !
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/4/13/230344.shtml?s=ic
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Posted by DrEngine on 03/31 at 05:23 PM (Link to this comment)
“Well in that case I’m going to file suit against my government. Because I want FISA fixed so it can cast a wider net. A citizen can bring a lawsuit to change a law, no?”
Yes, actually you can. You can probably make them pay your attorney fees if you win too…
“If the government has used surveillance illegally in the past, to spy on anti-war protesters and civil rights activists; why wouldn’t you be skeptical that they might be doing it again?”
President Clinton was dinged for abusing one of those programs. So yeah. But one of the spin techniques of this whole episode is to take parts from two different programs to make one scary sounding one out of the parts. There is the echelon type program and the FISA related program. The actual FISA one is a non-scandal really but the echelon type program is the one you might want to shut down.
“Do you completely trust your government? I don’t know if Bush abused his Executive powers in the FISA situation, but I wouldn’t be surprised, AND I wouldn’t take his word for it.”
Nope, don’t trust em.