Julia Roberts burst out onto the scene with Pretty Woman in 1990. Since then it seems like she’s been riding that one achievement. Her films don’t do too badly, but they’ve all been pretty mediocre and appealed mostly to weepy women like Jennifer Aniston. Except for a few like Ocean’s 11. But that was more about Brad Pitt and George Clooney than her.

Consequently because of her name alone, New Line Cinema paid her $3 million up front for Valentine’s Day for her six minutes of screen time. Vulture did the division and calculated it to be $8,333 per second of screen time or $500,000 a minute. A minimum of $11,952 per spoken word.

Insiders tell us that Roberts agreed to appear in the film as a favor to Marshall, who’d made her a star. After Roberts jumped in, casting the rest of the film was much easier, and Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Garner, Ashton Kutcher, Taylors Lautner and Swift, McSteamy and McDreamy et al signed on quickly. However, with the exception of Jamie Foxx (who we hear is a gross participant along with Marshall and Roberts), her co-stars were paid their usual quote, pro-rated to however many days they filmed. Since most, like Roberts, only worked three days or so, it seemed a fair and painless commitment, and New Line was able to make the film with a cavalcade of celebs for only $50 million. Now get going.

ONLY $50 million? For a film that’ll probably suck? For guys anyway. Julia Roberts reminds me of a braying mule yet seems to wield so much power. Hollywood doesn’t make sense. They tell us that women don’t have to have much talent to make it as long as they look like Megan Fox and then they shove Julia Roberts down our throats. That’s like stumbling upon a village of big breasted models and finding out their queen is Madonna.

[LA, February 8. Images via Fame.]

Katherine Heigl is full of herself. Apparently, New Line realizes this and has dropped her from the ensemble cast of Valentine’s Day after she demanded $3 million for her role. To put things in perspective, neither Julia Roberts, Jennifer Garner, Anne Hathaway, Ashton Kutcher, Shirley MacLaine or Bradley Cooper asked for nearly that much.

Reps for Heigl deny this calling the story ludicrous and say that this was just part of the negotiation process. Also, Katherine wasn’t dropped, she left for “multiple reasons.” New Line had no comment.

Katherine Heigl is lucky she was even considered for the part and that no one else has been typecast as the shrill, annoying, chemically imbalanced girlfriend whose faults are overlooked only because she has a huge rack. She’s got that market cornered.

Heigl at the People’s Choice Awards earlier this year.