What are you getting your mother for Mother's Day? A box of chocolates? Gardening equipment? A power saw? Well whatever your mother is getting for the occasion, it's probably not going to be as big as Julia Roberts' big Mother's Day gift: $3 million for four days of work.
The figures comes from a Variety exclusive, which pegs Roberts' salary at the pace of $750,000 a day. This is interesting, considering that Garry Marshall's latest holiday anthology earned only $8.3 million at this weekend's box-office, which means that judging by Julia Roberts' salary as the sole expense in this example, the film would have only made $5.3 million this weekend. So while the film may have failed faster than a wilted bouquet of flowers for a lovely mom, Roberts is still riding pretty high.
Julia Roberts is still one of the highest paid actresses in Hollywood, though when it comes to her projects, the last one to make any sort of a splash was Mirror Mirror. While it wasn't exactly a triumph when it came to its critics, the 2012 film did manage to make a $183 million gross against an $85 million production budget. But with August Osage County and The Secret In Their Eyes, Roberts failed to have a hit as big as the Snow White retelling, or any of her previous hits before that. This is an interesting set of facts to keep in mind, as Roberts and George Clooney are re-teaming in the near future for the would-be summer blockbuster, Money Monster.
With George Clooney also suffering a pair of box-offices shortcomings, his being of the Tomorrowland and Hail, Caesar! variety, it's going to be interesting to see how Jodie Foster's financial thriller is going to pan out for the Academy Award winning trio. More specifically, analysts and fans should be keeping their eyes on how Money Monster performs against the second weekend returns of Captain America: Civil War, as well as the low-budget horror flick The Darkness, which is the latest film in the Blumhouse canon of low-budget/high yield films. Any other weekend, we'd think Money Monster was set to be a moderate hit that could make a decent amount of bank, while not being a blockbuster. But considering the film's actual competition, we're not exactly bullish on Julia Roberts' chances of becoming a solid financial investment yet again.
Now, obviously there's still a chance that Mother's Day could make some counter-programming wishes come true next weekend, as Mother's Day just happens to be smack dab at the end of Captain America: Civil War's opening weekend. However, we're not exactly putting our money down on that possibility, especially considering the fact that The Jungle Book has become such a box-office giant in its month of release that it looks to be the easy #2 pick of next weekend.
If you're curious as to how good Mother's Day truly is, you can see it in theaters now.
