Nina Jacobson knows a thing or two about producing high-quality TV and film projects. As a producer, she’s spearheaded projects such as “Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” “The Hunger Games” (and all the sequels), “Crazy Rich Asians,” “Ben is Back,” and “The Royal Tenenbaums” with director Wes Anderson. And it was her experience with Anderson on ‘Tenenbaums’ and his follow-up “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” that was the subject of a recent interview with Jacobson.
Speaking to Alex Blumberg on the Without Fail podcast, Jacobson talked her experience with Anderson and why Bill Murray was concerned he was the reason she got fired from Disney in 2006.
After the surprising success of “The Royal Tenenbaums,” Jacobson was excited to see what Wes Anderson had up his sleeve next. Of course, as we know, that project would be the aforementioned ‘Life Aquatic’ starring Murray. And when the producer got her hands on the script, not only was she excited to get started, but she took a big risk — she asked the studio for more money.
“When Wes Anderson gave me the script for ‘The Life Aquatic,’ it was a bigger budget and I was so in love and I was so blinded by my love that I went to battle to get considerably more money to make this movie than what we had spent on his earlier movies,” explained Jacobson.
She continued, “I will always remember at our first big screening of the movie afterwards people would come up and congratulate me on what a brave movie it was at which point I knew that I was fucked because ‘brave’ is code for ‘stupid’ in Hollywood.”
At the time, ‘Tenenbaums’ was the highest grossing film in Anderson’s history, leading Jacobson to think that his star was going to rise even more. However, ‘Life Aquatic’ ended up earning less than half what ‘Tenenbaums’ pulled in at the box office. For perspective, ‘Tenenbaums’ carried a reported $20 million budget and earned over $52 million domestically. On the other hand, ‘Life Aquatic’ cost a reported $50 million and only earned $24 million. Not a great return on investment for Disney.
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As mentioned, soon thereafter Jacobson was fired as an executive with Disney and ended up forming her own production company that has become a huge success. But at the time, many pointed to losses like ‘Life Aquatic’ as reasons for her departure. One of those people that was concerned was none other than Bill Murray, who called the producer to offer his condolences.
“At one point, Bill Murray called me and said, ‘Did you get fired because of ‘Life Aquatic?’ Because I’ve been worrying about that. I don’t want to feel bad about that,’” Jacobson said. “I was at home and I was like, ‘No, it’s not your fault, but thanks for calling.’ It was very sweet.”