Jon Hamm has had a pretty solid year to this point, even if you discount Top Gun: Maverick being produced a few years ago due to the pandemic. His latest is the reboot of Fletch, the Gregory McDonald creation made famous by Chevy Chase in the ’80s. Hamm stars in , directed by Greg Mottola, a pairing that you’d think would be enough to sell a movie.
Not so, according to Uproxx (Via Variety), with Hamm and Mottola actually needing to adjust their salaries to get the movie finished. Hamm gave back 60% of his salary to help finance three extra days of shooting to wrap up the film. Mottola also agreed to give up a portion of his salary, pushing the shoot to 30 full days instead of just 27.
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“Everyone said, ‘I don’t know that this kind of comedy works in this day and age,’” Mottola told the outlet. “They just had a kind of like, ‘Who’s Fletch? I don’t think anyone cares anymore.’”
“So, basically, what we did is Jon gave back 60% of his salary to the budget,” Mottola added. “I gave back some of my salary, not as much as Jon because he’s richer than me and I’ve got three kids. And we bought three more days of shooting. We got it up to 30 days in Boston and one day in Rome. And we said, f- it, we’re insane, we’re dumb. We’re going to make this movie. And then Miramax really supported us, creatively. They didn’t fight us on people we wanted to cast.”
The film is based on one of McDonald’s novels from 1976, sharing the same name as the film. Most likely remember Chase as Fletch and his reprisal in the original film sequel Fletch Lives. A new Fletch film has been in planning for decades at this point, with Kevin Smith pushing to produce an adaptation of Fletch Won with Jason Lee in the titular role.
“I almost made a Fletch movie years ago. Or I was trying to for years with Jason Lee as a young Fletch. There’s a book in the series called Fletch Won that Gregory McDonald wrote way late in the series that went back and told his secret origin story of how Fletch first got a job at the [news]paper,” Smith said.”One of my favorite f-in’ books of all time, still.”
Disgraced Miramax head Harvey Weinstein was against the idea of Lee in the lead, pushing for Ben Affleck to take the role instead. It all fell apart, leaving the door open for Mottola to direct. The decisions throughout seemed to have paid off considering the reviews so far.
The film has a limited run in theaters and is currently available on demand. Confess, Fletch will later premiere on Showtime on Oct. 28, 2022.
