What Cleo cost

So much crap about the $44 million cost of Cleopatra has been bandied around since its June, 1963 premiere you’d think someone would try to figure it out. Even now, on the Internet, there are claims it cost $60 million, without obligatory reference to inflation. Fox quietly printed a less hysterical budget when it gave the movie a deluxe DVD release in 2001: in a six page booklet included with the disc of Ken Burn’s Cleopatra: The Film That Changed Hollywood, a $35 million cost is disclosed. This suggests, at first glance, $9 million of non-Cleo expenses were originally added to the budget—Fox TV productions, Marilyn Monroe’s unfinished Something’s Got to Give, miscellaneous administrative costs. The revised budget also does not indicate how Fox might have craftily finessed the $6.5 million by insurance companies for the aborted London filming or the UK subsidies program to foreign productions employing a certain percentage of British crew, guesstimated at $2.5 million. Very much suspected is the latter two sums were used to punch up the cost to $44 million. If overhead, payout and subsidies are deducted, we’re talking a budget of around $28 to $30 million, after adding the two to four million for the Pharsalia reshoot in Spain. Whatever the realistic cost, the epic categorically remains the costliest movie made up to 1963.

And convenient bait for the press to incessantly splash about: the world-wide coverage of the infamy of the Liz & Dick affair and the movie’s troubled making guaranteed early high returns without initial massive outlay of Fox advertising dollars, using partnerships with clothing, jewelry and hair & makeup manufacturers eager to push for sales and the trades and glossies just as eager to increase circulation. From June through December 31, 1963, roadshows of Cleopatra collected a record-breaking $24 million in rentals. When the subsequent and ruinous “popular prices” version was released in the summer of 1964, Fox would claim spending $13 million on ads to stem the receding tide of viewers. Fox remained mum on something else—circumventing any public information updating b.o. totals, permitting the lingering yet false assessment the epic stalled at $24 million, an “at large” perception held for years when showbiz bible Variety failed to change the total in its thick annuals. Studio-produced bombs usually get considerations in write offs, deferrals and/or credits (used to quietly cover escalating cost of ads). The rules complicated, if not intentionally Byzantine, and all deemed legit if the accounting passes forensics; which is to say, flops and bankruptcies were then, as now, synonymous with financial wizardry.

In April, 1964, Fox filed a highly publicized lawsuit, initiated in vicious spite by Darryl Zanuck against Liz and Burton for $55 million, likely noticed by the IRS but not for the allegations of the couple’s reckless personal behavior having caused the expensive delays and poor box office results. Filed in New York state court, the suit came in five convoluted parts: two specifically against Liz, one against both Liz and Burton, one solely against Burton, and one against Liz, Burton and various others. The first three parts assert financially injurious conduct from and between the adulterous lovers; the other two read as last minute gambles if the suit as a whole became mired in trouble. It did: the federal court in New York took jurisdiction in an attempt to settle arguments over remanding the case back to state court, whether Liz and Burton could be sued jointly; the federal court’s decisions confusing but, in forecasting heavy legal expenses endured by all, provided impetus to what would eventually come to pass. Cutting to the chase: the real reason Zanuck went after Liz was when she told the media, after seeing the movie in London, her outspoken opinions of what she thought of the version of the picture he edited, bruising his cigar-smoked ego. But arousing public and legal interest more was Fox in its filing specified Cleopatra grossed $29.75 million in 148 cities in 31 countries, from which Liz received $20 million. Whoa! Even with her contract giving her a million bucks plus overtime and perks and 10% of the gross, and even with the much less known commissions as holder of the producing company MCL, as partner in Walwa Films, and as benefactress of TODD AO which she inherited a chunk of when husband Mike Todd died, the amount of $20 million overwhelms common sense to become suspicious accounting fantasy. In Cleopatra: The Film That Changed Hollywood, it’s stated that by the time Liz completed filming on June 23, 1962, she pocketed $7 million. She’d have to wait at least a year before starting to earn the 10% on gross and by Fox’s own figures as of April, 1964, it would not have exceeded $2.975 million. Liz fired back at the time of the suit’s filing saying Fox hadn’t paid her a dime of gross % and counter-sued, with Burton and producer Walter Wanger also suing for breach of contract. Not until selling airing rights to ABC for $5 million (in installments starting in 1966 for a 1971 showing) did Fox report the movie went into the black and was making a slight net profit. If TV sales clauses were in her contract, Liz would likely see as much as $500,000 coming from the man suing her. Box Office Mojo lists the following updated results: as of June, 2013, Cleopatra earned a domestic take of nearly $58 million, and internationally $14 million. The domestic number doesn’t appear to be adjusted much for inflation but, as with Variety, surreptitiously kept from view; the same skepticism greeting Fox’s long stagnant 1963 U.S. figures also greet the non-USA totals. If the movie has earned roughly $72 million, Liz’s percentage would be $7.2 million. She was proud to boast, “The movie never lost a dime.”

While Fox vs Liz & Burton was resolved “amicably” out of court without details disclosed, in all likelihood there’d be a renegotiation of her gross percentage, TODD AO commission (in light of the success of The Sound of Music) and other residuals. Liz personally endured another suit from a theatre chain in Oregon over the same charges of immoral behavior dampening box office. Paying a non-refundable $175,000 to Fox for the exclusive right to show Cleopatra, the chain wanted money back after the movie supposedly flopped and issued a subpoena to depose Liz for all the dirt. The court overseeing the matter sided with the plaintiff and attempted to enforce her appearance. Not having any of it, she appealed and won. (Years later Liz, denying two suicide attempts during the making of Cleo, would concede her conduct in Rome probably didn’t help ease the burgeoning costs of the movie.) The famed Rivoli Theatre in N.Y. sued Fox in an effort to recover some of its $1,250,000 non-refund advance, arguing the studio didn’t live up to the promise of Cleopatra as a blockbuster. In its 64 week run, the theatre collected a total of $2,554,375 from more than 590,000 viewers. Litigation eased when the Rivoli reaped the benefits of the bonanza of The Sound of Music yet allegedly sparked up again when Fox threatened to pull the musical over the theatre’s reluctance to give up the cash cow to show the already contracted downer The Sand Pebbles as a Xmas 1966 attraction.

To this day we still don’t know the verifiable cost to make Cleopatra, nor how much it made at the box office world-wide, nor how many millions Liz received. We do know her estate continues to receive residuals from DVD and Blu-ray editions of the movie.