MaThe weekend that it was announced that Robert Downey Jr. would be returning to the Marvel Universe, Marvel was definitely expecting a hero’s welcome, and at least at San Diego Comic-Con, that’s what happened. The thing is, Downey won’t be playing Tony Stark, the Tony Stark whose ending will remain unchanged in Avengers: Endgame, but rather Doctor Doom, the comic’s primary villain who will threaten the Avengers (whoever they are) in at least two blockbuster movies scheduled for release in 2026 and 2027. Geeks rejoice. Giving them more of what they love while still protecting the canon?! What could be better?
But in the days that followed, it was with Thanos-level inevitability that the news swirled with details of the financial arrangements that would make this glorious return possible. While hard numbers on these deals are rarely officially released, variety It also includes speculation from anonymous sources about how much Downey and his handpicked directors, the Russo Brothers, are getting paid for the project. The Russo Brothers, returning for the first time since Endgame, are reportedly getting $80 million for the two films, with Downey reportedly getting a lot more than that, plus a ton of expensive perks. All of this is being paid for by the company that Downey himself pestered to pay the gym memberships of the other Avengers! Even if these figures are exaggerated, it seems certain that Downey will break the record for movie advances.
Star pay has been making headlines for years. Downey’s pay marks the beginning and end of a nearly three-decade span that began when Jim Carrey became the first actor to receive a $20 million advance for his starring role in the 1996 comedy The Cable Guy. Though the film was Carrey’s first box office flop as a leading actor in the ’90s, the $20 million figure stuck. With a variety of stars including Tom Cruise, Will Smith, Leonardo DiCaprio, Julia Roberts and Sandra Bullock joining the “$20 million club” at various points, the figure has long been considered the benchmark for advances for a single film.
That’s not to say nobody got paid more, but big checks that didn’t make sense without them were often used to lure stars back into sequels. That’s why Mel Gibson, Johnny Depp and Arnold Schwarzenegger all reached the $30 million mark for Lethal Weapon, Pirates of the Caribbean and the Terminator series. For years, $20 million still felt like the benchmark for a true top star; Jennifer Lawrence, for example, arguably reached that mark with 2016’s Passengers, 20 years after Carrey broke that barrier.
But as the star market has given way to brands and intellectual property in recent years, some advances have still counterintuitively soared, sometimes to over $20 million. The main reason is that executives are fully committed to streaming, a nebulous revenue stream that offers fewer benefits in terms of residual income, ancillary services, and profit sharing. The back-end deals that bring in huge profits, such as those that pushed Keanu Reeves’s per-film earnings in The Matrix sequels or Bruce Willis’s in The Sixth Sense from around $15 million to more than $100 million per film, just can’t exist for Netflix movies that have very little back-end. That’s why Leonardo DiCaprio reportedly received $30 million instead of $20 million for his recent streaming-funded movies. Perhaps realizing that the rapid shift to streaming has even eroded the prospect of a formal theatrical release, some new stars have been able to raise their asking prices. Reports vary, but Ryan Gosling reportedly made around $12 million for his role in the box office flop The Fall Guy earlier this year, and Zendaya made $10 million for producing and starring in the smaller film The Challengers, her first lead role in a national release as an adult.
Is this too much for stars whose biggest successes have been Barbie and Spider-Man? At the very least, these figures raise further doubts about the sincerity of studio heads, as when Disney CEO Bob Iger called the demands of actors and writers “unrealistic” during last year’s Hollywood strike. In retrospect, he must have meant it, considering he had to pay Robert Downey Jr. the equivalent of several mid-budget movies to keep him from playing Iron Man. At the same time, the stars are somewhat complicit in helping to kill the mid-budget film they claim to want, by taking their big bucks.
It really comes down to the question of what exactly is worth the top dollar in a movie budget. The informal rule of thumb used to be that if the movie in question made that amount or more on its opening weekend, then the actor’s salary was worth it. The studio was basically paying for a head start. Even in their heyday, most stars couldn’t convince absolutely everyone to see anything, but they could convince a lot of people to see something. To some extent, the movie has to do the rest. By this standard, Carrey’s $20 million for The Cable Guy wasn’t such a ridiculous amount. Back in 1996, audiences brought in about $20 million worth of money on the opening weekend of a poorly reviewed, deeply unpleasant black comedy just because Jim Carrey was in it. Audiences didn’t really like what they saw, and the movie flopped, but Carrey’s presence would have played a part, even if the movie he made hadn’t. Similarly, while The Fall Guy flopped at the box office and The Challengers was only a moderate success, it’s hard to imagine either film making as much money without Gosling or Zendaya — even if they were replaced by bigger stars and perhaps cost more to make, of course.
Perhaps this is a sign that anyone in a $5 million+ movie is overpaid, and in the grand scheme of things, that is of course true. Public school teachers deserve more, nurses deserve more. But in the scarce and expensive world of filmmaking, we can at least do a rough, if imperfect, calculation. Of the nearly $100 million that The Challenger grossed worldwide, Zendaya likely made some by people who wanted to see her. She has fans, and the movie likely earned her some more. Contrast this relatively simple exchange with the common practice of rushing out special effects, which still often results in low-quality movies, because special effects artists are not fairly paid.
But the real problem is probably not creative, because executives like Disney’s Iger and Warner’s hated David Zaslav don’t see the box office deals drying up. Their base salaries aren’t usually movie-star levels, but their annual compensation, with stock and bonuses, far exceeds that of many A-list actors (who also pay their agents, managers, and other staff). Ultimately, that’s what makes Downey’s new Avengers salary seem even more outrageous. That money, plus the perks that come with it, on top of the half-billion dollars he’s reportedly already made from Marvel, makes him more than just a highly paid actor. He’s become a CEO version of himself, this time playing Tony Stark in real life.
