It Took Nearly A Decade Forrest Gump To Finally Make It To The Big Screen

 It Took Nearly A Decade Forrest Gump To Finally Make It To The Big Screen

But Finerman wasn't just the wife of a Hollywood executive, she knew the entertainment industry inside and out. 

After beginning her career at The Movie Channel and moving to Universal Television, she became vice president of production and development for Steve Tisch Productions. 

When she read the galley prints of "Forrest Gump" in 1985, she and director Robert Zemeckis were drawn to its offbeat narrative style that mixed comedy and pathos.

Zemeckis and his star, Tom Hanks, were so convinced of the film's quality that they took pay cuts to ensure the viability of the production. At the time, Paramount wanted to cut the film's $50 million budget. The Orlando Sentinel reported that the studio asked Tisch and Finerman to cut their salaries by $10 million, and Zemeckis and Hanks struck a deal on their own, confident in the film's success:

"Under the original 'Forrest Gump' deal, Zemeckis and Hanks had contracts that required the star to make $7 million and the director to make $5 million. Salaries were the highest budget item on the film, and Hanks and Zemeckis agreed, in Hollywood parlance, to 'defer' a portion of their fees in exchange for a share of the box office based on a formula. Had the film not been a success, they could have ended up with much less than their original salaries. «

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