If there's one thing he's used to since he got his first big break in 1998, when he won the Oscar for best original screenplay with Matt Damon for The Untamed Will Hunting, it's that he's been given more attention through the ups and downs. of his personal life than for his artistic merits. The fact that he was, with his friend, the youngest person in the history of the Academy to receive this award, at only 25 years old, did not earn him the respect he deserved, particularly when, once he became a big star thanks to his role in Armageddon with Bruce Willis, comments about his relationship with Gwyneth Paltrow took up more space in the press than about his work as an actor.
And so it continued over the years: there was only talk of his courtship with Jennifer López, then with Jennifer Garner, his divorce, his problems with alcohol, and in the cinematographic field, the resounding failure of Gigli (in Catalonia it was titled A Dangerous Relationship). But despite the rumors, Ben Affleck continued to build a magnificent career as an actor, and even better as a director.
The Best Picture Oscar winner for 2012's Argo (along with two more Golden Globes and four nominations) is gearing up to release his fourth film as a director, Air , which hits theaters today and then on Amazon Prime. The film explains how Nike managed to become one of the most important companies in sports shoes when in 1984 it convinced the up-and-coming Michael Jordan to sign an exclusive contract with them. Air was produced by the new company Affleck formed with Damon, Artists Equity, and was shot with a portion of the $100 million fund they raised from investor RedBid Capital Partners. And that's how the Boston-raised Californian sets out to revolutionize the way Hollywood works with his lifelong friend. Instead of getting even richer and keeping the difference between the $30 million the film cost and the undisclosed figure Amazon paid them (although it is known that spent $7 million to air the trailer for the upcoming release during the Super Bowl), Affleck and Damon have partnered with the entire crew involved in the film.
Indeed, the number that we may never know was shared with the other members of the cast: Jason Bateman, Viola Davis, Chris Tucker, Chris Messina, Jay Mohr, Barbara Sukowa, Marlon Wayans and Gustaf Skarsgard. But scriptwriter Alex Convery, director of photography Robert Richardson, art director François Audouy and many other technicians also received a percentage of the profits. In a long interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Affleck explained: “These people have an importance in the making of a film that everyone does not understand. The idea is to hire the best and tell them that if we succeed in creating what we propose, they will participate in the profit margin between the cost of the film and the figure for which we sell it. All those who participated can say today that they are part of the highest paid technical team in the history of cinema." Obviously the bet could have gone wrong if the shooting budget had grown more than the account. "In this case we would have told them that they should be paid much less because they would have to accept what the union signs. But they knew that if we did well, the compensation they would receive would be galactic", he explained.
