Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis Get Shown The Money for THE HANGOVER 2

The stars of The Hangover have officially signed and gotten a major salary increase to make The Hangover 2 according to Deadline.

Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis will each get $5 million against 4% of a first dollar gross while director Todd Phillips will be paid around $10 million against 10% of the gross. Considering the three leads of the film each got around $300,000 to make their infamous trip to Vegas, it seems like Warner Brothers knows that have a surefire hit on their hands.

But where will the sequel take place and when will it come out? When Phillips talked to Steve at ShoWest a few weeks ago, he said it would not be in Thailand or Mexico and that they were aiming for a November 1 shoot date. That seems very likely now that the money has been figured out after six months of negotiations.  Hit the jump for more details on this massive deal.

Last summer, The Hangover came out of nowhere to become the highest grossing R-rated movie of all time raking in $467 million worldwide. Before its release, the studio didn’t see a lot of potential for sequels to a raunchy R-rated comedy so they didn’t work any sequel options into the actors’ deals. That ended up being a very costly error because when the film became a runaway success, a sequel was inevitable and dollar signs surely went off in the management teams of all those involved. Phillips might have been the only one with faith in the film’s potential. He gave up almost all of us his upfront fee in exchange of 15% of the revenue (which has made him around $50 million for the deal).

The Deadline story, which has many more details, also states that during negotiations Warner Brothers chief Jeff Robinov gave up and called the sequel off. That’s how much leverage the stars had at the table. But, no matter how much more The Hangover 2 costs (the original only cost $34 million) it’s the closest thing to a guarantee there is in Hollywood. They’re aiming for a Memorial Day 2011 release.

But, it has to be said, where was Justin Bartha in all this? Without him, there’s no first hangover. Let’s hope the star of Gigli gets his paper too.