What Cleo cost

So much myth 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 obligatorily referencing 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 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 and miscellaneous administrative costs. The revised budget also does not indicate how Fox finessed the $6.5 million by insurances companies for the aborted London filming or the UK Tax Relief program guesstimated at $2.5 million. Very much suspected is the latter two sums were used to punch up the total to $44 million. (If we deduct overhead, payout and tax relief, 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, aided by the partnerships with clothing, jewelry and hair & makeup manufacturers and the trades and glossies eager to push for increased circulation. From June through December 31, 1963, the 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, likely a tax deduction, to stem the receding tide of viewers. Fox did something else too—it circumvented updating any public information on b.o. totals, permitting the lingering yet false assessment the epic stalled at $24 million, an “at large” perception remaining 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; complicated, if not Byzantine, and all deemed legal if the accounting passes forensics, bombs and bankruptcy were then, as now, synonymous with financial wizardry.

In April, 1964, Fox filed a highly publicized lawsuit, initiated in 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. (Cutting to the chase, the real reason Zanuck went after Liz was simple yet unactionable: she told the media straight away what she thought of the version of the picture he edited.) Arousing interest 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 as actress giving her the supposed million dollars 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. (In fact, Liz fired back at the time of the suit’s filing saying Fox hadn’t paid her a dime of gross %.) 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. Contractually for Liz the $5 million is additional gross total; thus, and injurious to his ego, Zanuck may have reluctantly okayed a $500,000 check to 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 sound as if it’s been over-adjusted for inflation, yet the same skepticism greeting Fox’s long stagnant U.S. figures should greet the non-USA total. 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, while denying two suicide attempts during the making of Cleo, would concede her conduct in Rome probably didn’t help ease the burgeoning financial 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 but 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.