How much does it cost to have a Rolling Stones song in a movie?
This is the question we asked ourselves when “The Studio” came out, the Apple TV + series that has just beaten every record of nominations (23) for a comedy. It also competes in the categories “Best musical supervision” and “Best original composition”, signed by Antonio Sánchez, the “Drum Boy” already at work in “Birdman”. It is no coincidence that the Seth Rogen series is a centrifuged by “The protagonists” of Altman, “Birdman” and, not knowing it, of “Boris” and “Call My Agent”. Frantic assembly and plot, following the vicissitudes of the Neocapo of the Fictitices Continental Studios who, as a cinema nerd, starts with the idea of producing author films and finds himself having to manage films of absurd superheroes and zombies with dysentery, whims of directors, fake speeches to the Golden Globes and parties based on hallucinogenic mushrooms. The cameos are star (Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Steve Buscemi, Bryan Cranston, Steve Buscemi, Charlize Theron, Ice Cube, Zac Efron, Zoë Kravitz for Citane some) and the plot is the summa of Murphy’s law: each solution generates new problems and, if something can go wrong, he will do it.
In episode 2, the protagonist is incurred on a set where he is tolerated only because he has a white check booklet and could pay the rights to use “You Can’t Always Get What You Want Want” by Rolling Stones. This is the object of desire. You are willing to do anything to have the song in the film they are shooting (song that we are talking about, but that is not heard during the entire episode). You have to make the money unhook to the Chief of Studios. Cost of the operation: 800,000 dollars. At this point the viewer probably wondered: is it an exaggerated figure, for a series that focuses on hyperboli, or is it a sincere confession on the abnormality of Follywood?
In reality, the costs of the licenses vary on the basis of many factors, such as the popularity of the song, the duration, the vehicle (films, TV, advertising, streaming). In the case of the Stones, a six zeri figure is completely possible: when Microsoft used “start me up” for the launch of “Windows 95” He had to pay 3 million dollars. “Thunderstruck” by AC/DC, inserted in the film “Varsity Blues”, was paid half a million dollars. But it was 1999: today they correspond to at least double.
One does not imagine how much you have to think about that precise song that will make that precise scene memorable. There are artists who hesitate to give permits also in the face of Martian offers. Just remember when Jack Black rented a theater, with hundreds of people, to record the video in which he begged the Led Zeppelin to grant him the rights of “Immigrant Song” for “School of Rock”. Lesson one: if you desperately want something, then prostrate.
The scene worked, and also the scene of the film. On the other hand, denying a consent to Jack Black would have overwhelmed the maximum exponent of the rock venerators. No discount instead to the majors who have deep pockets: the same “immigrant song” cost over four million dollars to Disney for “Thor: Ragnarok”. Director Taika Waititi said he was worth them all. The band accepted the agreement only after seeing the trailer, ensuring that everything was perfect, and when the film came out in the room the song recorded a peak of sales, the song dated back to the top of the ranking almost half a century from the first publication.
They are their own, the Zeppelin, the most fussy. Ben Affleck knows something about it, who paid about a million dollars to put “When the Levee Breaks” in the film “Argo”, nor was it enough. He had to add money for a post-production intervention on a scene. The reason? In the one already turned, the girode rod fell on the first furrow of the vinyl, while the song in question is positioned at the end of “Led Zeppelin IV ”. Everything to be redone.
According to the US sector newspapers, it is quite normal to allocate 10% of the overall budget of a soundtrack film. “Almost famous” by Cameron Crowe tried a lot, spending three and a half million dollars only for music, beyond double the usual and expected. Still, calculations in hand, it is little compared to the number of songs (about fifty) and the names that Crowe has pulled inside. He probably managed to snatch a favor agreement because the artists absolutely wanted to be part of the project. Commercially it was a flop, 60 million were spent for a film that collected 47 million in the world, but became a cult and in any case won the Oscar for the best soundtrack.
Friendships count, see what David Chase got in the film “Not Fade Away” asking the intercession of Little Steven as a supervisor and executive producer: the yes of Dylan, of the Stones, and, miracle, of the Beatles. Here, the Beatles. Everyone wanted them but very few were able to have them. More than money, the group needed the image control, therefore it worked in a prolonged “no”, at least until the Danny Boyle of “Yesterday” arrived. The Beatles have ensured seventeen songs to the film in which one person on earth remembered that they had existed. Perhaps, knowing their sense of humor, they wanted to accept the only film that canceled them from history.
In Boyle the operation cost ten million dollars, less and less than it cost the manufacturer Mauro Berardi to put a abundant “Yesterday” in the film “We just have to cry”: 70 million lire to allow Massimo Troisi to hum yesterday, Bom-Bom… Bom Bom It is music, na na na na na far away ”. Do you want to put? It is engraved in the collective memory, which lasts much more than the records.
By the way, on the credits of the episode of “The Studio”, there was “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by Rolling Stones.
