Buck Ice Age Quotes

To say that the frozen silence contracted itself into a yet higher globe of ice were to under-rate the exquisite tension and to shroud it in words. The atmosphere had become a physical sensation. As when, before a masterpiece, the acid throat contracts, and words are millstones, so when the supernaturally outlandish happens and a masterpiece is launched through the medium of human gesture, then all human volition is withered at the source and the heart of action stops beating. Such a moment was this. Irma, a stalagmite of crimson stone, knew, for all the riot of her veins that a page had turned over. At chapter forty? O no! At chapter one, for she had never lived before save in a pulseless preface. How long did they remain thus? How many times had the earth moved round the sun? How many times had the great blue whales of the northern waters risen to spurt their fountains at the sky? How many reed-bucks had fallen to the claws of how many leopards, while that sublime unit of two-figure statuary remained motionless? It is fruitless to ask. The clocks of the world stood still or should have done.

I think Fox was paying him about a million bucks a year, and he had created the Ice Age franchise for them, which was billions of dollars of value. I said, “Here’s how we’re going to negotiate with Fox. On a separate track, we’re going to create a company that you’re going to run. We’re going to get off-balance-sheet financing and we’re going to align you with another global distributor.” At the time we had at least three studios that would be great strategic fits. But he didn’t want to be an employee, he wanted real ownership. So we created parallel paths. On one track was the Fox negotiation, which I told him would take a year, and they would give him a 15 percent increase. They would grind it out and play hardball. I told him, “At the end of the day, they’re not going to pay you anywhere near what you’re worth. But on this other track, we’ll create this opportunity to change your life, for you to have something of your own.” I remember having a meeting with Mark Shmuger and David Linde, who were literally in the first day of their new jobs as co-chairmen of Universal Studios, and Bryan, Richard, Kevin, and I met with them in their first official meeting and I pitched them the idea of being in business with Chris, and they said, “Yes. We want you to do it.” It took probably well over a year, but ultimately we created Illumination. Universal came in and financed the company 100 percent. They wanted to clean up their balance sheet because they were about to sell to Comcast, so we got paid an investment banking fee for $ 4 or $ 5 million, and then on top of that we’ve commissioned every movie that Chris has done. Chris got a very, very, rich deal, probably the best producing deal there is. The truth is, on Minions he’ll probably make $ 80–$ 90 million. To date he’s probably made hundreds of millions. And he’s got Despicable Me 3, and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.