Jennifer Lawrence, most-known for her roles in 'Winter's Bone' [2011], ' Silver Linings Playbook' [2013 - for which she earned the Oscar Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role] and the 'Hungar Games' film series will be teaming with Chris Patt, who recently became a popular actor due to ' Guardians of the Galaxy'[2014] and the record-breaking 'Jurassic World' [2015] in an original romantic sci-fi set in outer space.
Hollywood's two hottest stars will be participating in a film dubbed "Gravity with romance" in Sony's upcoming high concept blockbuster 'Passengers'' alongside the Oscar nominee director Morten Tyldum (The Imitation Game [2014]).
The movie has been in the works for the past couple of years, at one time Keanu Reaves and Reese Witherspoon were cast as lead roles with a mediocre budget of $35 million at Weinsten Co., but the movie was turned down. Warner Bros. was then chosen with a budget of $65 million, but even that wasn't enough to start production.
After bouncing from place to place, 'Passengers' eventually ended up with Sony, who have not only cast the abovementioned Hollywood stars, but also increased production budget to $150 million.
A large sum of that will however go to the lead roles, as insider sources mention Pratt's renumeration increasing from $10 million to $12 million, because of 'Jurassic World's success and Lawrence getting $20 million, against 30 percent of the profit after the movie breaks even.
Questions were quickly raised about such high salaries, but apparently Sony Pictures' new motion picture chairman Tom Rothman found himself in a "lose-lose scenario" because he was caught between setting a pay precedent that might haunt him in his new role and passing on a project with two of the biggest stars in Hollywood.
Rotham chose to wager on the sci-fi movie, but also secured financing partners Village Roadshow and LStar to cover as much as 75 percent of the budget. This will serve Sony well incase 'Passengers' ends up like Disney's 'Tomorrowland' which proved to be a huge flop for the studio, albeit its $190 million production cost and George Clooney in lead role.
