Sunday, January 26, 2025

August 26, 2016

Hollywood’s Highest Paid Actors – And The Three Questions That Need Asking

If you've ever dreamt of packing it in and moving to Tinseltown in search of glory this list might do the trick. Also, we need to talk about Adam Sandler.

How much bank did you make between June 2015 and June 2016, because Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson made that and then some.

The 44-year-old came out tops during the period in question, racking up $64,5 million (R916 million) in earnings.

Not bad for someone who many still consider a WWE wrestler, although that money in the bank might change a few perspectives.

Dwayne handled the announcement with a motivational message and a few emojis, of course:

Hollywoodpayday2

But hey, let’s take a run through the top 20 with the help of the Telegraph:

  1. Dwayne Johnson = $64,500,00
  2. Jackie Chan = $61,000,000
  3. Matt Damon = $55,000,000
  4. Tom Cruise = $53,000,000
  5. Johnny Depp = $48,000,000
  6. Ben Affleck = $43,000,000
  7. Vin Diesel = $35,000,000
  8. Shah Rukh Khan = $33,000,000
  9. Robert Downey Jr = $33,000,000
  10. Akshay Kumar = $31,500,000
  11. Brad Pitt = $31,500,000
  12. Adam Sandler = $30,000,000
  13. Mark Wahlberg = $30,000,000
  14. Salman Kahn = $28,500,000
  15. Leonardo DiCaprio = $27,000,000
  16. Chris Pratt = $26,000,000
  17. Will Smith = $20,500,000
  18. Amitabh Bachchan = $20,000,000
  19. Matthew McConaughey = $18,000,000
  20. Harrison Ford = $15,000,000

Maybe you haven’t heard of those Bollywood names, but the rest are quite recognisable.

So what are these questions that need asking? Right, let’s do this – the Telegraph again:

How did The Rock double his money in a year?

[He] has had a spectacular year thanks to upfront fees for the…Central Intelligence (which clocked $208 million at the box office) and Baywatch, in which he’ll play Mitch Buchanan.

He’ll also have received a paycheck after signing up for the eighth film in the Fast and Furious franchise, which has made him seriously bankable, along with the $473 million box-office triumph of San Andreas.

How much did Netflix pay Adam Sandler?

Hollywoodpayday34

Why Netflix, why? Anyway, here’s how he managed to bank 30 bar last year:

The comedic actor’s career may be ailing on the big screen (last summer’s Pixels was universally panned by critics and cinemagoers alike). Last year, Forbes estimated that Sandler’s last three films delivered just $3.40 for every dollar he was paid.

And yet Netflix (which Sandler signed a deal with because “it rhymes with ‘wet chicks'”) signed him up. It was reported that the streaming giant could afford Sandler’s reported $80 million-per-film fee. The fact that Sander and Netflix’s debut effort, The Ridiculous 6, was widely criticised for being racist didn’t stop it from becoming the most popular film on the service in every country that it operates in. The Do-Over, released in May, scored even lower than Pixels on reviews.

Anyone seen Blended? Consider this a plea to DStv – please stop polluting our country’s minds with utter tripe like this.

Why aren’t there more big-budget roles for women?

Another year, another demonstration of Hollywood’s gender pay gap. Even when the pay is in the millions and the disparity is increasingly well-reported – including by the actresses themselves – the gap is wider at the top than the average between white men and women in the US.

Hollywoodpayday3

There are many reasons why Jennifer Lawrence, 2016’s highest-paid actress and a vocal advocate for gender parity, earned 72 per cent of what The Rock picked up last year, but one of them is that writers just aren’t creating the same big-budget roles for women, and studios aren’t paying actresses the same amount of money to fill them.

No one is going home hungry on that list, but that discrepancy between actors and actresses should be of real concern.

[source:telegraph]