George Clooney and Brad Pitt took pay cut to ensure new movie's cinema release

Brad Pitt and George Clooney accepted lower fees to ensure their new movie hits theatres.

The Hollywood stars – who have starred together in many projects together over the years, including ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ and ‘Burn After Reading’ – are reuniting for the upcoming as-yet-untitled thriller helmed by ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’s Jon Watts, which Apple Original Movies won the rights to in a fierce bidding war.

And Oscar-winner Clooney, who let slip that they were offered major wages for the motion picture, believes there is a place for movies to “co-exist” on the big screen and streaming platforms.

Clooney told Deadline: “And we said we’d like to take less as long as we can guarantee that we can have a theatrical release, and they said great.

“I do think that there’s a way that we can all co-exist. You know, I do think that there is a version of this that we can do. There’s a lot of movies that are fun to still see on a big screen. You know, the film I’m doing with Julia [Roberts] right now is a Universal film, and it’s a comedy, and comedies are fun to see in a room full of people.”

The bidding war for the film – which is described as a “tale of two lone-wolf fixers assigned to the same job” – was both an “extreme” and “exciting time” for Clooney, 60, and his 58-year-old co-star.

He added: “It was an exciting time because it got to be one of those weird bidding wars which happen every once in a while, and it ended up being pretty extreme, and Apple came in with a really big number for Brad and I.”