Warner Bros. will finally compensate its “The Hangover” cast — Zach Galifianakis, Ed Helms and Bradley Cooper — for the upcoming sequel that should shoot this fall. While sure, all of the cast have now gone on to become bonafide stars, it’s interesting to learn not one of them made over 300K for what is now the highest grossing R-rated comedy of all time and accumulated a whopping $467 million for the studio. Apparently the stars’ agents pushed back so hard for better salary points that WB heads (Alan Horn) even walked away from negotiations several times and at one point it looked like the film might have fallen apart, but cooler head’s eventually prevailed. But it apparently six months of headaches and back and forths to finally bang out deals for the entire cast (Justin Bartha likely did not make bank like the other three).
Let’s hope “The Hangover” isn’t a lazy comedy sequel and becomes what director Todd Phillips would have done had the “Old School” cast done a sequel (lord, that one’s never going to happen). As it is “The Hangover” was funny, but slightly overrated. It’s time for the boys and Phillips to step up their game.