After X3, movie fans tend to freak out when they see Brett Ratner near anything but the cheese dip. Which is why the news that Ratner (along with a partner) “will be a key player” in a $450 million deal with Warner Bros that will cover nearly all of the studio’s films for the next four years sounds a little scary. Brett Ratner near multiple films?! And where’d he even get all that money, did someone mail him the gold steering wheel from Tower Heist?
From a recent Hollywood Reporter cover story:
That became clear Sept. 30 when Hollywood let forth a collective gasp at the news that Ratner and [Ratner’s business parter, Australian billionaire James] Packer were two of the key players behind a $450 million slate deal with Warner Bros., a joint venture between RatPac and Dune Capital Partners that will cover 75 films, or nearly all of the storied studio’s product over a four-year period. It’s not just the first time in recent years that Warners has agreed to take a financial partner across its complete body of work; it’s also the first time a director has been involved in any such undertaking.
Oh God, Brett Ratner is involved with EVERY FILM for FOUR YEARS?? What awful movies hath this unholy alliance already wrought??!
How much actually ends up being invested will depend on the success of the individual films and the money that then is plowed back in through the RatPac-Dune Entertainment deal, but the slate’s first release, Gravity, already has grossed $284 million worldwide (and counting).
Wait… wait… For commercial and critical smash success Gravity we have… BRETT RATNER to thank? Oh, God… room spinning… nachos floating around head like blue birds… need drink…
Sources say RatPac-Dune will fund 25 percent of Warners’ share of each picture the studio makes — with a few exceptions, such as a Harry Potter spinoff and the Hobbit films. It largely will make up for funding that dried up when Legendary Entertainment left for Universal.
Unlike Legendary and another long-term Warners-based financier, Village Roadshow Pictures, RatPac-Dune will have no ability to cherry-pick projects; instead, this is a “blind” investment across Warners’ entire slate.
Ahhhh, NOW it makes a little more sense. Brett Ratner’s investments are at their creative best when he’s blind, much like his sexual partners. It turns out, this is actually great news. Brett Ratner gets to finance a bunch of films without being involved in them creatively. I’ve always said the guy is a much better schmoozer than he is a filmmaker (I may have said “ass-kisser”, but tomayto tomahto). And now he can have his cake without getting his Cheetos-stained fingers on our slices. Something like that. He still has his Hercules movie starring The Rock coming out (Hercules: The Thracian Wars), but for WB, he’ll just be a money man. I guess you could say that he’s got his fingers in every pie.
The rest of the profile, a brofile, if you will, gets personal, nearly succeeding in humanizing Brett freakin’ Ratner. Who’ll always be a crotch-fondling, shrimp-humping, nacho-lover to me. A couple tidbits:
Ratner’s mother had fallen in love with Ronald Ratner — the son of a multimillionaire who made a fortune through rat poison and then real estate investments — but her family was mortified when she accidentally got pregnant. They split up around the time of their son’s birth, and Ratner only rarely saw his father as a child. He knew his dad had succumbed to drug abuse but did not know he was homeless.
Wait, Brett Ratner is the heir to a rat poison fortune? Ratner? Rat-poison? Was that name just a self-fulfilling prophecy, the law of attraction, or did Tyler Perry write Brett Ratner’s entire life story? Actually, that would make a lot of sense.
Contrary to his party-boy reputation, he avoids so much as a hint of alcohol, let alone anything heavier, and says even in his school days, he was too focused on films to think of anything else: “I never tried a drink to this day. I’ve never had a sip of alcohol — a sip of alcohol, ever. I’ve never had a drug. No interest.”
I knew there was a reason I never trusted that guy.
He says he also has spoken amicably with actress Olivia Munn despite a mini-scandal when he claimed he had “banged her a few times.” (That comment was blurted out after she had disparaged an unnamed director’s sexual antics in her memoir, Suck It, Wonder Woman!) He says that he and Munn have put their differences behind them: “We laughed about it. It was ridiculous.” (A rep for Munn says simply, “That is not at all true.”)
Aw, there’s the Rat-man I know. I bet if you made a Venn diagram of “things Brett Ratner says”, “things Olivia Munn’s publicist says,” and “the truth,” it’d look like three zeroes.