John Williams Composer Fee? How much per film?

[Mr. Gitz 85]

Something that’s always fascinated me is why certain composers aren’t used more. And since this is Hollywood the usual answer is probably money. I mean…how hard would it have been to ask John Williams to compose the music for Captain America? Or even just the theme?

 

So it got me thinking. Does anyone know how much he makes to score a film like Star Wars or any given Spielberg project? Or even back 20 years(*20 years!?!* how is that even possible?) for something like the first Potter film? 5 million? More? Less?(it can’t be less? Can it?)

[Not Mr. Big 4,639]

One thousand dollars 

[Bespin 8,472]

John Williams started at the bottom of the ladder. Then came Jaws, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, E.T... The rest is history.

 

I really hope he’s one of the best-paid composers in Hollywood!

 

You asked why certain composers aren’t used more?

 

I’m going to preach for myself, but I would say that when a director chooses his composer well, it often gives a second life to his film. So I’d say it pays off to chose a good one.

 

And it pays off for a composer to chose a good director!

 

Some directors don’t like music, some directors don’t know music, others don’t believe in the virtues of an original score and others just don’t accept that music plays a full-fledged character in their film. There’s something for everyone.

 

And it’s not always the director’s fault, there are composers who simply do not agree to play the game and make concessions that the medium imposes. Some take themselves too seriously or not seriously enough.

 

I would say that those who don’t have a job, well, it’s because they have a bad reputation.

 

If you speak against other composers and against directors, go to unemployment right now...

 

Film music composer... it’s a whore’s job... and the customer is always right!

[artguy360 1,842]

I really don't think money is why JW hasn't scored any Marvel movies. He's been semi-retired from film composing for years now, he has kept a very busy schedule while scoring fewer films, etc.  

[bruce marshall 1,314]

Mandated minimum wage in CA is $16.99 hr

[DangerMotif 1,037]

Real Q, how much do you think he makes per year on royalties? Well north of a million/year I would assume.

[bruce marshall 1,314]

20 minutes ago, Gibster said:

Real Q, how much do you think he makes per year on royalties? Well north of a million/year I would assume.

Easily!

[Tom 4,631]

 

[Bayesian 1,353]

It's been claimed or stated elsewhere in this forum that JW earns north of a million dollars per film. However, It's not clear (a) whether it's true, (b) whether he lowers his fee for smaller scoring assignments (e.g., The Post), (c) when he started commanding that kind of fee, or (d) how much he makes on the backend or in terms of profit participation or whatever it is they call "points" in Hollywood remuneration schemes. But as @bruce marshall says, for sure JW is earning loads in royalties from his catalogue, and that's gotta be substantively more meaningful than the size of his upfront fee.

[Darth Mulder 153]

In an interview for Home Alone, he says that the fee is not important to him if he likes the film. Some productions can't pay much. I rather wonder if he would have hired an orchestra for his own money in a low-budget film. What does it mean that he is the producer of his music? 

 

 

4 hours ago, Bespin said:

I really hope he’s one of the best-paid composers in Hollywood!

This is variable. There was certainly a period when he was the highest paid composer. It's hard to say which period of his career it was. After the success of Titanic, James Horner was the highest paid composer in Hollywood. Now, or in the past decades, it was probably Zimmer. 

[publicist 4,643]

2 hours ago, Darth Mulder said:

In an interview for Home Alone, he says that the fee is not important to him if he likes the film. Some productions can't pay much. I rather wonder if he would have hired an orchestra for his own money in a low-budget film. 

 

That's not really how it works. First of all, Williams never worked on 'low budget' films (Home Alone or The Post sure weren't low in production values or marketing budget) and savvy agencies like Gorfaine/Schwartz usually trade lower upfront salaries for gross points or other compensation perks. And i'm rather sure a package deal gamble, like Horner took on 'Titanic', paying for the sessions himself, wouldn't be in Williams' ballpark (Williams needs his orchestras, whereas more flexible guys would do a more cheap piano/synth score, 'Titanic', after all, has not that much orchestra, either).

 

There's a interesting story in Paul Hirsch's 'Long Time Ago in a Cutting Room Far, Far Away', how Horner in the wake of the Titanic juggernaut commanded a 3 Mio. $ music budget on a trifle like 'Mighty Joe Young', going as far as elevating a whole recording stage, by all accounts just reckless spending because he could do it. He basically punished Disney for having to toil on 'Titanic' for his own money!

[Bespin 8,472]

A record producer is a recording project's creative and technical leader.

 

An executive producer, on the other hand, enables the recording project through entrepreneurship, and an audio engineer operates the technology.

[karelm 2,901]

You can think of it as he's an A list (top call).  Like Zimmer, James Newton Howard, Powell, etc.  They charge about one million to two million per film JUST for creative fees but also make royalties and charge for other services like conducting and orchestrating.  We know those fees because those are union scales which usually are set as minimums, but you again know with these people, they charge a premium so can charge quadruple scale.  That means if JW conducts his music for his film, he is charging at least four times the union scale.  It's not that easy to know what union scale is because it's based on the budget of the film.  An ultra-low budget film might be $one million and less which pretty much none of these people do, so the conducting fee for that film would be maybe $100 per hour including pension (then JW and the other A listers would charge quadruple scale) so $400 an hour at the low end.  For big budget like Indiana Jones, Marvel, etc., union scale is around $250 with all pensions and fees so A listers would charge $1,000 per hour.  They'd record 6 hours per day if in LA (steep surcharge if it goes into overtime) and can take two to three weeks so on a very big budget film, you can imagine JW making $90,000 for conducting the score ($1,000 per hour x 6 hours a day x 5 days a week for 3 weeks).  These days, he'd outsource to Dudamel and Ross some of those hours.  Also keep in mind the Star Wars films had multiple sessions but clearly budget wasn't an issue in that case.  Those might have been six weeks of sessions spread across a few months.  I doubt JW ever charged more than 2 million for a creative fee because he pretty much only works with his friends or passion projects.  In short, he isn't really a business and when you calculate all the money he's made (remember Star Wars soundtrack was the highest selling classical album for like a decade with something like 11 million copies sold...now Titanic is considered #1 but all the Star Wars albums have sold millions and are in the top 200 so all combined are probably 50 million plus copies), plus with his relatively modest lifestyle, he has way more money than he can ever spend.

 

Marvel and Star Wars seems to be on TV all the time so they also get nice royalty checks.  Again, these are very, very complicated because they don't pay straight rates.  Prime time and major channels pay higher than 1am cable.  I would bet these A listers get at least another one or two million a year purely from royalties of their movies always being played around the world and having a long catalog of popular films.  These are very, very rich people.

[Tom Guernsey 2,277]

6 hours ago, publicist said:

 

That's not really how it works. First of all, Williams never worked on 'low budget' films (Home Alone or The Post sure weren't low in production values or marketing budget) and savvy agencies like Gorfaine/Schwartz usually trade lower upfront salaries for gross points or other compensation perks. And i'm rather sure a package deal gamble, like Horner took on 'Titanic', paying for the sessions himself, wouldn't be in Williams' ballpark (Williams needs his orchestras, whereas more flexible guys would do a more cheap piano/synth score, 'Titanic', after all, has not that much orchestra, either).

 

Obviously I couldn't prove it, but I'd be shocked if James Horner couldn't have afforded a full orchestral setup. Even before Titanic, he'd been in the business for almost 20 years with several Oscar nominations, many scores a year for some of the biggest movies of those years. I appreciate the film music recording is an expensive business, but I can't imagine James Horner not having a couple of million dollars spare in 1997 to pay for Titanic himself if he really wanted (and I'm not quibbling with the results). Then again, it seems shocking that the studio cut the budget to save a few hundred thousand dollars in the music budget, notwithstanding the massive overruns in the budget elsewhere.

 

As for how much JW earns... I'm sure I remember reading that for Jurassic Park, he negotiated a much bigger fee/package which made a considerable impact on the way all film composers were paid. I can't remember the details exactly or where I read it, so no idea why that particular time/film caused him to negotiate for more (he would have been in a strong negotiating position for about 20 years at that point!). I have a feeling it something like being a change from the composer just getting a fee to the composer effectively been given a total budget from which they paid themselves but also then paid for the sessions etc., i.e. was basically the producer for the music. Perhaps someone else knows more... assuming I'm not massively misremembering something!

[bruce marshall 1,314]

George Lucas gave JW profit participation AFTER SW became a huge hit!

First time that was ever.done.

HITCHCOCK should have done the same for PSYCHO- cheap bastard#!

 

The big money is in tv theme songs.

Elfman makes a shitload from SIMPSONS esp. because it's technically considered a SONG.

JW wouldn't be that rich just from soundtrack post- SW sales, which have never approached the numbers of SW, LION KING or TITANIC.

[Bayesian 1,353]

17 minutes ago, bruce marshall said:

George Lucas gave JW profit participation AFTER SW became a huge hit!

First time that was ever.done.

HITCHCOCK should have done the same for PSYCHO- cheap bastard#!

I didn’t know that! That was a generous and classy move on Lucas’ part. I can only imagine the goodwill from JW to Lucas that gesture built.

[publicist 4,643]

3 hours ago, Tom Guernsey said:

I appreciate the film music recording is an expensive business, but I can't imagine James Horner not having a couple of million dollars spare in 1997 to pay for Titanic himself if he really wanted (and I'm not quibbling with the results).

 

Why should Horner (or anyone else for that matter) do that? It's less a matter of wanting or not wanting to do it, it makes you look like an idiot if you pay a large wad of your own cash for pimping a property belonging to a studio without getting anything in return (but the job).

 

Afair, they paid him a flat fee of a million $ or something and he would have to make ends meet. It might also have had something to do with Horner's reputation for costly perfectionism, as Austin Wintory pointed out in one of his podcasts: some guys finished two jobs while Horner was finetuning 'Casper' with a 100+ piece orchestra. Amblin and Universal footing the bill, of course.

[Manakin Skywalker 4,889]

23 hours ago, Mr. Gitz said:

Does anyone know how much he makes to score a film like Star Wars or any given Spielberg project?

 

[SilasGupta 9]

There is a budget list of Shyamalan‘s „The Village“ here, which at page 69 of the document lists James Newton Howard‘s fee of 1.3 million (not including expenses ). That was 20 years ago… so nowadays Howard should make quite a lot more, especially as an A-List composer. Williams might be somewhere in that range as well I‘m sure 

[Jay 37,249]

$50,00 for photocopying music?  $20,000 for MIDI file transfer?

 

Hollywood!

[Bespin 8,472]

Here's a part of JW's invoices: $125,000 for HB pencils!

 

[karelm 2,901]

2 hours ago, SilasGupta said:

There is a budget list of Shyamalan‘s „The Village“ here, which at page 69 of the document lists James Newton Howard‘s fee of 1.3 million (not including expenses ). That was 20 years ago… so nowadays Howard should make quite a lot more, especially as an A-List composer. Williams might be somewhere in that range as well I‘m sure 

This is a proposed budget.  Not what it cost but a good reference.  It's clearly an early draft.  Likely the producers needed a guestimate, so the various teams submit early guesses and that's what leaked here.  For example, this as far as I can tell does not include the very pricey concert soloist, Hilary Hahn, who could charge $100k per day and at the bottom of the page, the film had a working title of "The Woods".  This is clearly a projected budget so the filmmakers can get the necessary approvals from accounting before moving forward.  I would bet whoever leaked this was a production student of a teacher who worked on the film and was showing an example budget they worked on.  It's very useful for those who want a benchmark of what fees are like but there are place holders and guesses.  Stuff like "studio fees" just where composers know they always have unanticipated equipment needs.

[MikeH 768]

7 hours ago, Jay said:

$50,00 for photocopying music?  $20,000 for MIDI file transfer?

 

Hollywood!

Pretty sure copying refers to the copyists/music prep (preparing the sheet music for the sessions). MIDI files transfer would be getting JNH’s demo midi files cleaned up and ready for Jeff Atmajian to do his orchestrations. 
 

Orchestrating from MIDI files is a headache. It’s an incredible amount of work to go from a computer demo to sheet music that is actually playable by musicians. Orchestrators sometimes deal with hundreds of tracks in these midi files, often sloppily thrown together, and they basically have to sort out what is needed and what is not. Composers who want to impress the studio heads will just add more and more tracks to make a great demo, but when it comes to translating that to an orchestra it’s a lot of work. 
 

JW has his short sketch score which, in comparison, is relatively simple to orchestrate out to full score for the copyists. 

 

[Mr. Gitz 85]

On 10/7/2022 at 4:44 AM, publicist said:

 

That's not really how it works. First of all, Williams never worked on 'low budget' films (Home Alone or The Post sure weren't low in production values or marketing budget) and savvy agencies like Gorfaine/Schwartz usually trade lower upfront salaries for gross points or other compensation perks. And i'm rather sure a package deal gamble, like Horner took on 'Titanic', paying for the sessions himself, wouldn't be in Williams' ballpark (Williams needs his orchestras, whereas more flexible guys would do a more cheap piano/synth score, 'Titanic', after all, has not that much orchestra, either).

 

There's a interesting story in Paul Hirsch's 'Long Time Ago in a Cutting Room Far, Far Away', how Horner in the wake of the Titanic juggernaut commanded a 3 Mio. $ music budget on a trifle like 'Mighty Joe Young', going as far as elevating a whole recording stage, by all accounts just reckless spending because he could do it. He basically punished Disney for having to toil on 'Titanic' for his own money!

 

I guess you could look at this as semantics depending on what one considers “low budget”, but Home Alone was most definitely a lower big studio budgeted film. Infact Home Alone is one of the most infamous examples in Hollywood lore of a major studio being penny wise & pound foolish. WB was the original studio Home Alone was set up at. The movie was close to the start date of filming when the plug was pulled over the budget. It was something like WB wanted the movie to come in at under 15 million. The producers couldn’t make that happen so production was shut down, only for Fox to swing in and make the film for 18 million. WB lost out on one of the most profitable comedies ever made due to a few million dollars. Gotta love it. 
 

 

there’s also “The Book Thief” where apparently Williams, in a super rare move, contacted the filmmakers to ask if he could score the film. Imagine getting that phone call? “Yes Mr. Williams. You may score my film”. 
 

but again, it all depends on what one’s definition of low budget is. Low budget for a major studio release? Yes. Low budget compared to some indie films? No. Not even close. 

 

[publicist 4,643]

3 hours ago, Mr. Gitz said:

I guess you could look at this as semantics depending on what one considers “low budget”, but Home Alone was most definitely a lower big studio budgeted film.

 

Semantics, for sure. But remember, it was a John Hughes production, who was still one of the most wildly successful writers/producers. Home Alone didn't have major stars, that's why it was *relatively* cheap, though one has to remember, in those day a budget of 20 Mio $ wasn't that low, either.

[BB-8 3,457]

5. What is John Williams' net worth?

John Williams' net worth is an estimated $100 million, which he has amassed over 60 years spent as a successful film composer, conductor and pianist.

 

John Williams: Compositions, movies, age and awards revealed - Classic FM

 

[Darth Mulder 153]

He has much more money...MORE THAN ZIMMER!!!

 

https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-businessmen/producers/john-williams-net-worth/

[karelm 2,901]

3 hours ago, Darth Mulder said:

 

He has much more money...MORE THAN ZIMMER!!!

 

https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-businessmen/producers/john-williams-net-worth/

 

This guy can eat them both for breakfast.

George Lucas Net Worth | Celebrity Net Worth

[Bayesian 1,353]

4 hours ago, karelm said:

 

This guy can eat them both for breakfast.

George Lucas Net Worth | Celebrity Net Worth

I've always been suspicious of sites like these telling us how much wealth celebrities have. How do they even know? And it's not like most celebrities have $100M in Ben Franklins stuffed into their sofas--much of their wealth is likely in investments, which means their value can change dramatically pretty quickly. So again, how do these sites know? How up to date is their info?

 

All that notwithstanding, it's nice to see JW at the top of the composer heap.

[Marian Schedenig 8,153]

2 hours ago, Bayesian said:

much of their wealth is likely in investments

 

[Bespin 8,472]

John Williams is VERY RICH.

 

In talent of course!

[karelm 2,901]

6 hours ago, Bayesian said:

I've always been suspicious of sites like these telling us how much wealth celebrities have. How do they even know? And it's not like most celebrities have $100M in Ben Franklins stuffed into their sofas--much of their wealth is likely in investments, which means their value can change dramatically pretty quickly. So again, how do these sites know? How up to date is their info?

 

All that notwithstanding, it's nice to see JW at the top of the composer heap.

Do you want me to read the page to you?  It literally breaks down how they estimate what you are asking about.