“It wasn’t so long ago, after putting in years building up his career, that Denzel Washington finally cracked the $20-million star salary club. But now he’s taking a sizable pay cut to star in the upcoming 20th Century Fox film “Unstoppable” after the studio threatened to pull the plug on the picture in order to get its costs down. David Fincher used to make $8 million to $10 million per picture, along with a nice piece of first-dollar gross, as an A-list director. But he’s taking considerably less money — and no first-dollar gross — to get his new Sony Pictures film, “The Social Network,” off the ground.

“What’s going on here? In Hollywood, whenever a studio executive would sit down to negotiate with an agent for an actor, writer or filmmaker, one of the first questions volleyed across the table was: What’s your client’s quote? If you’d written, directed or starred in a big hit, or even enjoyed a couple of modest successes in a row, your quote went up. And unless you ran off to make some nutty labor-of-love indie film where everyone committed suicide in the third act, your salary level was assured. That quote stuck like glue. Even after a few stinkers, a big star could still get their $15- or $20-million fee.

“Why did the movie studios finally get tough with talent? And is this really good for the movie business? Bad for talent? Or just a rare sign of fiscal sanity? Keep reading:

It’s an interesting read for sure. Hollywood salaries aren’t what they used to be! You can read the rest of the article here.