Jon Hamm Gave Up Most of His Salary for Confess, Fletch to Help Pay for Film

For decades now attempts to reboot and revive the character of Fletch for the big screen have been made. Kevin Smith, Bill Lawrence, and a host of other shave been attached and later dropped out, but a new Fletch movie finally debuted this year….and you probably didn’t even notice. Confess, Fletch, a new movie based on one of Gregory Mcdonald’s books, features Mad Men star Jon Hamm in the title role, and has an 85% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes with a “Certified Fresh” distinction. Despite critical acclaim the marketing for the movie is non-existent, and if it weren’t for Hamm’s interest in taking on the part it probably wouldn’t even exist at all.

“Bill Block at Miramax has been the champion of this project since the beginning,” director Greg Mottola told UPROXX about the film. “I don’t blame anything about the release of this movie on him. He’s tried everything he could try. Basically, he said, ‘Up to a certain amount of money, I can fully finance this film,’  but it was the kind of amount of money that would mean 27 days of shooting, which seemed especially challenging. So we looked for partners on the movie, and everyone passed. Everyone said, ‘I don’t know that this kind of comedy works in this day and age.’ They just had a kind of like, ‘Who’s Fletch? I don’t think anyone cares anymore.’”

He continued, “So, basically, what we did is Jon gave back 60 percent of his salary to the budget. I gave back some of my salary, not as much as Jon because he’s richer than me and I’ve got three kids. And we bought three more days of shooting. We got it up to 30 days in Boston and one day in Rome. And we said, f-ck it, we’re insane, we’re dumb. We’re going to make this movie. And then Miramax really supported us, creatively. They didn’t fight us on people we wanted to cast.”

Mottola goes on to reveal that the film was made for a $20 million sum, a level of forthright honesty that is seldom encountered in Hollywood. The movie’s bizarre release strategy, small theatrical debut and simultaneous VOD debut, with a later Showtime debut, is largely the production company and distributors trying something new. 

“I really feel like this is a product of: nobody knows what works at the moment and they’re trying stuff out, but it is very weird for me,” Mottola said.

The filmmaker also confirmed that work on a follow-up has already begun, with Miramax having hired him to go ahead and pen the script for another movie. Mottola noted that he’ll be adapting Fletch’s Fortune for the next movie revealing that it “all takes place at a journalism conference, so I’ve got lots of ideas how to bring that into all the insane worlds of today.”

Confess, Fletch is now playing in select theaters and available for streaming on-demand, it will premiere on premium cable network Showtime on October 28.