Bradley Cooper is one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. He has starred in a magnitude of massive projects like The Guardians of the Galaxy series, Joy, Silver Linings Playbook, and Nightmare Alley. He has even directed the Oscar-winning movie A Star is Born and was a producer for the highly critically acclaimed movie, Joker. One of his most notable roles, however, is in The Hangover Franchise.
The first movie, The Hangover did exceptionally well due to its concept. The movie follows a group of men at a bachelor party who have no memory of an entire night. The plot thickens when they are unable to find the groom 24 hours before his wedding. The movie is considered to be a cult classic even though the last movie performed quite poorly. So the question that arises is, what went wrong?
The Unexpected Success and Failure of The Hangover Franchise
When the first Hangover movie was being produced, it had a budget of $35 million, paying all the actors involved, Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, and Zach Galifianakis, less than 1 million (Cooper was the most well-known at the time, so was paid the most). This movie, unexpectedly, ended up being a massive box-office hit, grossing a total of $467 million worldwide.
The studio took quite a bit of convincing, but a sequel was quick to follow. The Hangover Part II featured the same cast, who were now much bigger and much more relevant, and were now to be paid around $5 million each. This movie ended up making over $500 million at the box office. It was wanted but not expected by fans to get another Hangover movie as the concept was considered exhausted at this point. So it was quite surprising when a third movie followed, leading to the eventual failure of the franchise.
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Bradley Cooper Almost Said No To The Hangover 3
Many people believed that a third part of the Hangover Franchise would work. The concept of the first movie was quite unique but three movies back to back with almost the same storyline get very old, very quick. It was quite simply assumed that Hangover 3 if it were to be made, would not do as well as the first two movies. It seems that Bradley Copper along with Ed Helms, and Zach Galifianakis was also plagued by these possibilities.
The stars were basically completely opposed to the idea at first, but the filmmakers were quite persistent and a deal was agreed upon. Each star was to be paid a total of $15 million each along with a back-end deal regarding profit-sharing. This was only agreed upon by the star after a condition was agreed upon that a fourth installment would not be made. The movie made $362 million worldwide, making it the worst movie in the franchise.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
