Daniel Stern nearly lost out on co-starring as Marv the burglar in “Home Alone” and the sequel — by asking for more money.
The actor writes in his new memoir, “Home and Alone,” out Tuesday, that he was set to be paid $300,000 for six weeks work on the original 1990 movie.
But then, “I got a call saying they had redone the shooting schedule and they would now need me for eight weeks instead of six,” he writes. “They were asking me to add on 33% more shooting time, so I asked if they were going to raise my salary the same amount, and they said they would not.”
Producers hired a different actor to start rehearsals with Joe Pesci in Chicago — but, luckily for Stern, it didn’t work out.
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A couple of days later Stern got a call that they wanted him back and would “honor the original contract and make the schedule six weeks.”
Relieved, he said he learned a valuable lesson from the near-disaster.
“It switches at some point where you go, ‘OK, I’m committed to the project,'” he told The Post. “If it takes 14 weeks, I’m going to miss the kid’s graduation because I committed to this. And so that was the lesson.
“Luckily I dodged the bullet of my stupidity and ended up in the movie.”
“Home Alone” grossed nearly $500 million worldwide — after costing just $18 million to make — leading Twentieth Century Fox to plan a sequel almost immediately.
According to the book, the film’s pint-sized star, Macaulay Culkin, had a sequel deal for $5 million plus 5% of the gross box office.
“So, I said, ‘Well, you know, this is going to be awesome,'” Stern told The Post.
It took producers six months to even make an offer of “$600,000, double my original salary, but not quite the pot of gold I was hoping for,” he writes. “I asked if that was the same as Joe [Pesci] was getting, and they said it was not.”
The studio eventually upped the offer to $800,000 but Stern discovered that Pesci was “getting somewhere between $2,000,000 and $3,000,000 plus gross percentage of the profits.”
He was determined to get at least half of what Pesci was making. So when Stern’s agent advised him to take the offer, the actor fired him.
ntaining fresh fish" >Now, he admits it was a “prideful thing to do,” but he adds that, if that’s best his agent could do, “then he wasn’t very good at his job.”
Stern took over his own negotiations — by playing a game of chicken. He practically doubled his ask, shooting for $1.5 million and 2% of the gross profits.
The ploy went down to the wire until the then-head of Fox, Joe Roth, personally called and asked Stern to start filming without a contract.
In the end, the gambit played off: Stern got his asking salary and 1% of the gross.
“I knew they couldn’t do the movie without me, but I was also insecure, since I almost blew it the first time,” he writes. “I didn’t want to be too greedy when I loved the movie and the part so much.”
