“Ruined in Six Months” Matt Damon and Ben Affleck thought they were “rich for life”: They were sorely mistaken

News culture “Ruined in Six Months” Matt Damon and Ben Affleck thought they were “rich for life”: They were sorely mistaken

The success of Will Hunting

In 1997, two young people walked through the fr ont door of Hollywood and caused a stir. Ben Affleck and Matt Damon penned the script for a film that is still considered one of the best psychological dramas today.

With Will Hunting (1997) they won two of nine nominations at the 70th Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actor and Best Original Screenplay. First and foremost is Robin Williams for his captivating portrayal of Dr. Sean Maguire. The second introduces Matt Damon and Ben Affleck to the big leagues of the 7th kind.

Voted the 53rd most popular film by the Hollywood Reporter in 2014, “Will Hunting” grossed no less than $225.9 million in its theatrical release against a modest budget of $10 million. Will Hunting was praised upon its release by the press (97% on RottenTomatoes) and the general public (94% on RottenTomatoes), who discovered that two actors promised big things. However, behind this success story there is another story whose secret only Hollywood knows. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck hit the jackpot with Will Hunting, and suffice it to say they weren’t very frugal in the late 1990s.

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“Ruined in six months”

At the time, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck shared a joint bank account and lived off small contracts, mostly endorsements. But after Will Hunting, things change drastically… at least for a while. Our two friends sold Will Hunting’s screenplay for the modest sum of $600,000 and were left penniless almost six months later.

Ben Affleck returned to this mishap during The Drew Barrymore Show:

I said to myself, “We are rich for life. I will never have to work again. I’m rich.” Before that, we worked every now and then, worked a little more, a few lines here and there. , every now and then a typical Burger King commercial… and then we took the money and put it in the joint account.

We sold (the script) for $600,000, we split that up, $300,000 each, and then the agents got $30,000, so we had $270,000. We paid about $160,000 in taxes, so we had $110,000, each of us bought a Jeep Cherokee for $55,000 and we still had $55,000 left. Naturally, we decided to rent a party house on Glencoe Way, near the Hollywood Bowl, for $5,000 a month and were broke within six months. -Ben Affleck

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