Will Ferrell: Overseas player?

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Can Will Ferrell sell movie tickets in Madrid or Moscow?

That was the underlying question every studio found itself pondering this week during the tumultuous negotiations that led to Sony Pictures buying ‘The B Team,’ a highly sought-after pitch that teams Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg in a big-budget action comedy that Sony hopes will have the same broad appeal as the Chris Tucker/Jackie Chan-starring ‘Rush Hour’ series. As Variety reported in its story, the comedy was pitched around town earlier this week by Endeavor and CAA, who represent the two actors as well as filmmaker Adam McKay, Ferrell’s longtime partner, who will direct and co-write the script with Chris Henchy.

What Variety didn’t report was the project’s steep price tag, which eventually knocked New Line, Universal and Paramount--who all have various relationships with Ferrell--out of the negotiations. To land the project, which is still nothing more than a pitch, Sony had to agree to shell out roughly $100 million to make the film, with the talent pooling roughly 25% of the first-dollar gross. (If the film ends up costing less, the talent will split the underages with the studio.) The studios all loved the film’s buddy cop premise, which has Ferrell and Wahlberg playing desk-jockey cops who finally get a shot at real action when the police force loses many of its top A-team members to layoffs and retirement.

But the numbers were still daunting. The big question at every studio was this: Can we make a film with this steep of a price tag if it’s only going to be a hit in the U.S., when so much of our business today is geared to the international market? Ferrell is an undisputed comedy star in America, where he’s been the leading man in three $100 million-plus comedy hits--’Talladega Nights,’ Blades of Glory’ and ‘Step Brothers.’ But none of the three films has made more than $27 million overseas, with ‘Talladega Nights’ being an unusually poor performer, considering its rave reviews, grossing $148.2 million in America but only $15 million overseas.

With a $100-million price tag, ‘The B Team’ would be a big leap forward in budget from Ferrell’s earlier films. Ferrell’s team made the case that unlike many of Ferrell’s earlier sports-themed films, which didn’t play overseas, an action comedy is the one genre that travels best around the world, as films like ‘Rush Hour’ have proved. But there were still a lot of studio skeptics, who noted that few American comedies cross over to an international audience. Even Adam Sandler, who’s been the most consistent comedy king in recent years, took years to crack the overseas market, with last year’s ‘You Don’t Mess With the Zohan’ being his first film to make as much money internationally as in America.

Will Ferrell be the next in line? Or will it take more than one action comedy to prove his worth in the multiplexes of Tokyo and Paris? With this deal, you could call it a $100-million question with no easy answer.