Samuel L. Jackson has become the latest face of UK’s biggest bakery brand Warburtons, joining a series of A-list legends who have taken on the role.
In the new two minute advert the Pulp Fiction star, 74, turns his hand to the top job in the Warburtons business, alongside the bakery’s real chairman, Jonathan Warburton.
While the bread advert may not have the same gravitas as his Oscar-nominated role in Pulp Fiction, Jackson will no doubt have received a hefty cheque for his day of work.
Although bakery boss Jonathan Warburton will not disclose the exact figure he shelled out he confessed the Hollywood partnerships are a ‘huge outlay’ with Robert De Niro, Sylvester Stallone, and George Clooney said to have received six-figure sums when they starred in his campaigns.
Now, MailOnline takes a look at the Hollywood heavyweights who swapped the silver screen for British TV adverts.
Snoop Dogg and Just Eat
In 2020 legendary rapper Snoop Dogg partnered with takeaway service Just Eat, starring in their adverts and recording a new song for the company.
The star gives the jingle ‘Did somebody say Just Eat’ a new twist in the popular advert.
He is said to have been paid £5.3 million for the 30 second clip, with a source explaining: ‘It’s easy money and the adverts have proved a hit with audiences.
‘Snoop is a legendary character so the negotiation took time and plenty of cash. But having him on board has not only driven sales, it’s given the brand a massive boost.’
The music insider added the song has proved very popular on social media and is the company’s most successful advert.
After its success in the UK, the campaign was rolled out across Europe and Australia.
Britney Spears, Kevin Bacon and EE
Golden Globe winner Kevin Bacon has been a brand ambassador for British mobile network operator EE since 2012 and has been featured in several ads for the company.
One notable advert saw him team up with Britney Spears, donning the singer’s iconic red catsuit and dancing around in front of the less than impressed pop star.
EE chief executive Marc Allera said they had chosen Spears for a recognisable and retro feel to the ad campaign, explaining: ‘We were looking for an instantly recognisable star and track with mass appeal, that Kevin could impersonate.
‘We also needed someone willing to embrace the playful nature of our ads and have a bit of fun. Britney was the perfect choice with her red rubber catsuit and her world famous Oops I did It Again track.’
Bacon is allegedly paid in the seven figure range for his EE partnership.
Mr T and Snickers
The A-Team star Mr T starred in one of Snickers’ most memorable and controversial adverts in 2008.
The clip showed the actor in a tank pulling up alongside a man exercising in tight yellow shorts before shouting: ‘Speed walking? I pity you fool. You are a disgrace to the man race. It’s time to run like a real man.’
He then forces the man to break into a sprint by taking pot shots at him with a Snickers machine gun.
It ended with Mr T uttering the slogan to the current Snickers campaign – ‘Get some nuts’.
However, just days after the advert debuted it was taken off the air following strong protests from the U.S. – despite the fact it was never shown on American television.
The U.S. lobby group Human Rights Campaign claimed the advert was homophobic, criticising Mars – which makes Snickers – for condoning ‘the notion that the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community is a group of second class citizens and that violence against GLBT people is not only acceptable but humorous’.
A spokesman for Mars said: ‘This ad is the second in a series of UK Snickers ads featuring Mr T, which are meant to be fun and have been positively received in the UK.
‘However, we understand that humour is highly subjective, and it is never our intention to cause offence. Accordingly, we have pulled the Mr T speedwalker ad globally.’
Nicole Kidman, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Compare The Market
Veteran actor and former Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger surprised fans in 2015 when he signed up to promote a two for one cinema offer with price comparison website comparethemeerkat.com.
In the advert, the former action hero Schwarzenegger was seen facing off against the hugely successful marketing campaign’s loveable meerkats Aleksandr and Sergei Orlov.
An insider said of the casting: ‘Arnie has worldwide appeal. He’s not going to come cheap but it will pay off in the long run.’
Later in the year, Arnie was replace by Oscar winning actress Nicole Kidman.
In the 40-second television advert, mother-of-four Nicole was seen arriving at the door of meerkat Aleksandr’s LA mansion – but proceeds to go on a date with his pal, Sergei.
Much to Aleksandr’s annoyance, the Australian actress finds Sergei adorable for using his Meerkat Movies code to take her to the cinema, and is seen stroking his face affectionately.
Gary Oldman and HTC
Three-time BAFTA winner Gary Oldman lent his star power to phone company HTC in 2014.
While Oldman is famously a method actor, he wouldn’t have needed to immerse himself too much for this role, which saw him say just three lines.
In the clip for the HTC handset One M8 smartphone, Oldman said: ‘Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
‘It doesn’t matter what I say, because the new HTC is designed for people who form their own opinions.
‘So go on then, ask the internet’.
HTC’s global marketing manager, Fiona Naughton, said of their new campaign. ‘We are investing in marketing talent to create different marketing that is not mainstream because we want people to understand the brand as well as the product.’
While it’s not known how much Oldman was paid for the advert, his predecessor Last year Robert Downey Junior was rumoured to have been paid a staggering $12 million to appear in a quirky commercial for the company.
Ryan Reynolds and BT
In 2016, Deadpool star Ryan Reynolds parodied his Hollywood lifestyle in an advert for BT.
The big budget campaign featured Reynolds jumping out of cars, walking through glass doors and mass signing autographs while being unable to slow down due to his hectic lifestyle.
The advert was rolled out across TV, national press and online but ended up banned following a complaint from rival Virgin Media.
The campaign promoted its ‘up to’ 52Mb Infinity fibre service as the ‘fastest speeds vs standard entry-level fibre products of major broadband providers’, with one ad including a comparison with Sky that used speedometer graphics.
Virgin Media lodged a complaint with the Advertising Standards Authority arguing that the ad misleadingly implied BT’s 52Mb Infinity service was the fastest maximum speed service for a lowest-priced package available in the UK.
The ASA concluded that the ads were misleading and had breached the UK advertising code.
Bruce Willis and Sky Broadband
Action man Bruce Willis starred in a comical Sky Broadband advert in 2013, with the star seen sprinting into an office while in his dressing gown.
The Hollywood heavyweight is struggling with his broadband in the clip, and is unable to watch himself in Die Hard without the picture pixelating.
He ultimately ends up deciding to switch to Sky Broadband before landing a date with an attractive office worker.
However, the advert was banned by the Advertising Standards Authority because it didn’t make clear the commitment customers needed to undertake in order to take advantage of their promotional pricing.
Jackie Chan and Woolworths
Martial arts legend Jackie Chan surprised fans when he appeared in an advert for the now defunct Woolworths in 2008.
The advert was in the style of a sitcom and saw the Karate Kid star chatting to puppets of a sheep and sheepdog.
The bizarre clip saw the puppets run to Woolworths to buy clothes while Chan stayed in the house showing off his karate moves.
While it was not revealed how much Chan was paid for the advert, it may have been more than the High Street department store could afford, as the company went bust in the same year.
DANVILLE — A third cannabis dispensary will not be opening in the city in the Lynch Road corridor.
The Danville City Council Tuesday night denied Parkway Dispensary’s special-use permit request to open a dispensary north of Sunnyside Dispensary.
The council voted 6-7 for it, with the vote failing, with aldermen Carolyn Wands, James Poshard, Mike Puhr, Ethan Burt, Eve Ludwig, Sharon Pickering and Robert Williams voting ‘no’ and aldermen Mike O’Kane, Heidi Wilson, Rick Strebing, Tricia Teague, Alesia Ford and Bob Iverson voting ‘yes.”
Alderman Darren York was absent due to a family member passing away.
The vote came after Mayor Rickey Williams Jr. provided the majority 8th vote needed to change the city’s zoning ordinance to allow one or more cannabis dispensaries that are authorized or licensed pursuant to the Social Equity and/or Social Equity Justice Lottery to locate within 1,500 feet of each other and/or within 1,500 feet of an Early Approval Adult Use cannabis dispensary. Current ordinance allows one, and the city already has approved Seven Point’s across the road from Sunnyside.
City officials said they were following state law with the ordinance change.
The zoning ordinance change received 6 “no” votes from Wands, Poshard, Puhr, Burt, Ludwig and Williams; and 7 “yes” votes from Ford, Pickering, Iverson, O’Kane, Wilson, Strebing and Teague.
Williams said this was the first time he’s had to provide a tie-breaking vote, as he cast the 8th “yes” vote.
Parkway Dispensary’s Ambrose Jackson, chairman and CEO with the owner The 1937 Group, said he was “very disheartened” with the council’s vote and will be looking at another city in this area to open the dispensary.
Jackson said they will be exploring their options, but have a timeline to move quickly due to the time already spent on this.
Iverson said the public didn’t seem overly concerned with adding another dispensary in the Lynch Road corridor. He said he wasn’t enthusiastic about it, but didn’t see why the city shouldn’t go along with it. Other similar businesses, such as grocery stores and others, locate close to each other and compete for customers.
Teague too said the market dictates whether or not there are customers. Every time she drives by Sunnyside, she sees people standing in line around the building.
“There’s obviously demand,” she said, adding that she believes many people are coming across the state line. She understands why another cannabis dispensary wants to locate there.
O’Kane said he doesn’t want another dispensary, but he’d rather have the cannabis dispensaries located in that area to have some control over them and keep an eye on them.
Mayor Williams said city officials had not wanted the dispensaries near residential areas in the city.
He added that other possible areas of the city have had high prices for the land or the license holders weren’t interested in the locations. They want to be near the interstate.
Resident Vince Koers said the city would be giving up vacant land near the casino that could be for something better, possibly another more profitable business.
City officials said the land hadn’t been developed in the past, and the developers were willing to build a roadway extension behind Sunnyside to the new dispensary and potentially open up even more retail space and go to the intersection proposed by the casino.
Puhr said having three cannabis dispensaries will saturate the market, like with video gaming.
“I just can’t see how the community can support it,” Puhr said.
He knows the city will lose sales tax revenue by not having it, but he doesn’t think the city would see any additional revenue coming in.
Jackson said the argument is baseless about more dispensaries saturating the area. More competition means better quality and lower prices, he said.
Teague said it’s the state who has issued four licenses for the Danville metropolitan area which includes Tilton and other areas in Vermilion County.
Strebing said he’d like to see a cannabis dispensary in the southern part of the city, and one around Wal-Mart.
Wands asked, “when is enough, enough?”
The council also heard opposition to the zoning ordinance change and special-use permit from Seven Point Dispensary’s Vanessa Dotson. Seven Point plans to build the city’s second dispensary this year across the street from Sunnyside.
She said two dispensaries will be enough to handle the customer business. They hope to break ground in March or April and finish construction this year.
She said they want to avoid oversaturating the area with cannabis businesses, and she too said little if any additional revenue will come to the city with the additional dispensary.
Danville Community Development Administrator Logan Cronk said they don’t know yet about a development boom in the Lynch Road corridor with the casino.
City officials also weren’t sure Seven Point was going to open, but Cronk said they hope Seven Point is successful.
He said one of the reasons the zoning commission voted to recommend approving Parkway Dispensary’s special-use permit was that positive growth outweighed any negatives.
Also at Tuesday night’s meeting, the council honored former fire chief Don McMasters for his 27 years with the city; first Black alderwoman Brenda Brown; former alderman Steve Foster, who served 27 years on the council; and former alderman R.J Davis, who was one of the plaintiffs who changed Danville’s form of government, with awards. Mayor Williams said COVID-19 prevented them from honoring their service. Brown said don’t be surprised if she runs again in 2025. Former aldermen Steve Nichols and Sharon McMahon will be honored at another time.
DANVILLE — Roadwork was far-reaching in the city this past year, with about 23 percent of the city’s roads improved in some way in 2022.
2022 also saw the completion of the Denmark Road and Jackson and Voorhees intersection projects.
According to Assistant City Engineer Eric Childers, “for the most part all construction has been completed for (the Denmark Road) project. The outstanding items to date that need completed are chain link fencing installed along a couple of areas on Denmark and Old Ottawa Road and due to the cold weather, some additional striping and bike symbols that need to be placed on the pavement. This will be completed next spring.”
Mayor Rickey Williams Jr. said, “I think our roads look better than they have in a long time overall, not to say we still don’t have problems, which we absolutely do.”
He said the Denmark project took longer than expected, but “it’s been awesome” to see it almost totally done.
Williams said the cool thing now is that someone can walk all the way across the lake to Winter Park and elsewhere using shared-use paths in the city.
“We’re making some headway in terms of connecting our shared-use paths and things like that,” he said. “We’ve done a ton of sidewalk work especially in the mid-town TIF district in corridors where there’s a lot of pedestrians walking.”
In 2023, the Vermilion County Trail Alliance will continue working to add more inter-model trail pathways in the community. It should have a portion of the first miles of trails completed in the summer to be used for hiking, mountain biking and other activities on the west side of Harrison Park.
VCTA has been awarded a local grant for Phase 1 trails and a new parking lot.
Its partnership with the city is for the trails on the west side of Harrison Park and a lakeside trail. The trail would be about a 12-mile multi-use pedestrian trail system on the west side of Harrison Park and undeveloped city lands to the north. The group plans to restore some of the historical infrastructure there. In the late 1930s there were trails, cobblestone bridges, a pavilion and picnic areas put in.
Williams said he’s also really proud of after getting up to more than $10 million in reserves and then $1.2 million the previous year, and setting aside $4 million for Bresee Tower’s demolition, the city ended the past fiscal year at the end of March 2022 with about $8.5 million in reserve.
“I think that’s really important because the money that we’ve been able to return from the reserve to our infrastructure allowed us to do all the road work that we did this year and will allow us to do more next year,” he said.
He said he’s really proud of the city’s pensions too.
“We made further gains this past year,” he said.
The police pension is 4.4 percent better funded overall than a couple years ago and the fire pension is 7.4 percent more funded.
As far as blight removal in 2022, Williams said he was a little disappointed the city didn’t do as many structure demolitions as it had in past years. He thinks the city completed about 60 in 2022.
However, the city did some larger projects which included the old Paxton warehouse which is comparable to probably doing 15-20 houses because of the cost and time it took, Williams said.
Williams said he’s also proud the city gained ownership of Bresee Tower this year. Demolition is expected next year. A request for proposals for demolition could go out in January.
He too said he’s proud of the city team of employees working for the city.
“Having the right people in the right places makes you be able to make bigger inroads,” he said.
He’s proud too of First Fridays downtown.
2022 being the first full year was incredible, he said.
On the low end, there could be about 1,000 people participating in the themed First Friday activities. On average, there can be 3,000 or more people at the events, he said.
“It’s just awesome to see so many folks downtown enjoying themselves,” Williams said.
March 2023’s Danville’s Got Talent is expected to be even bigger this year due to the event being limited for audience members due to pandemic restrictions last year.
“I think it will be a big night of fun for the city,” Williams said.
He said he’s also seen what he called a culture shift as a result of First Fridays and other efforts. He doesn’t see such nastiness on social media about downtown and the city.
The revitalization of downtown will continue into 2023 with Angel Alley planned with mural work and other grant work for streets, sidewalks and lighting.
The former Turk Furniture building is expected to have Firewater BBQ & Brew restaurant and an Italian restaurant open next year.
The openings of the Carle at the Riverfront and Christie Clinic at the Riverfront will occur next year.
Southern Illinois Healthcare Foundation is working on architectural drawings, with plans for a temporary location first. A temporary SIHF location, prior to the Sager Street location being completed, will be in the former OSF HealthCare Foundation office on Logan Avenue, next to the sleep lab. The Danville High School clinic also will be opening.
FedEx is expected to open in February or March.
Viscofan completed its $20-plus million expansion and added more jobs.
The casino is planned to open in April.
“Those are great just to see those ongoing developments,” Williams said.
“We’ve had over a quarter of a billion dollars of investment in Danville in the last couple years between expansions and new things,” he added.
The city also still is expecting restaurant development at the northwest corner of Vermilion and Fairchild streets.
Williams said he’s proud too of the decrease in crime the city’s seen the last couple years.
The city’s impacts from the 2020 Census and population loss still fully remain to be seen. The city has budgeted as if Danville Area Transportation Study, the area’s transportation planning organization, is going away; but it may not due to the area’s population formula used. Danville Mass Transit will be losing funding due to going from an urban to rural area.
The city’s budget includes adjustments due to funding based on population decreasing.
Initial construction for Garfield Park swimming pool and park improvements is expected to start next year. The renovations, resurfacing at the tennis center at Lincoln Park is expected next year.
Phase 1 of the riverfront project behind the arena also is being finalized. It will include extending the current boardwalk and there will be stairs on both ends going up the hill. There also will be two to three lookout points at the top.
2023 will be a big year, with the economic development and other projects, Williams said.
Major sewer and storm water work will be moving ahead, where neighborhoods have been seeing flooding and the city hopes to alleviate that.
A couple new positions in the city budget are a grants manager to help secure more money the city could receive from external sources, and also a digital marketing manager keeping the city’s website maintained and up-to-date and coordinating social media and doing some publicity and videos of Danville.
Williams said the city will be trying to help people better understand what the city does, and help with the city’s image of what people see, and think and know about Danville.