Cynical Cinema

I cam across an interesting bunch of statistics today.  Every year, there is a list of “highest paid movie stars”.  And the usual suspects are on the list, and it’s a boring list.  For my purposes here though, I will reprint that list for 2007:

1.  Will Smith (80 million bucks)
2.  Johnny Depp (75 million)
3.  Mike Myers (55)
4.  Eddie Murphy (55)
5.  Cameron Diaz (50)
6.  Leonardo DiCaprio (45)
7.  Bruce Willis (41)
8.  Ben Stiller (40)
9.  Nicholas Cage (38)
10.  Keira Knightley (32)
11.  Will Ferrell (31)
12.  Adam Sandler (30)
13.  Jennifer Aniston (27)

OK.  Boring list.  I know it.  Only Will Smith, however, seems worth the money.  He is the only actor in history to have 8 straight movies earn more than 100 million dollars each.  Johnny Depp and Keira Knightley are coasting off the Pirates of the Caribbean series, and Nicholas Cage seems to be there solely by virtue of National Treasure.  But several others are odd.  Eddie Murphy?  Mike Myers?  Their latest films are dreadful, and Meet Dave and The Love Guru will be lucky to earn 55 million dollars combined!  Whic brings us to the actually interesting list.  Here is a list of actors who are worth the money they are paid.  (For example:  if the number is 14.73 for Vince Vaughn, that means that for every dollar he is paid, he brings in fourteen dollars and seventy-three cents of gross income.)

1.  Vince Vaughn (14.73)
2.  Tobey Maguire (13.44)
3.  Julia Roberts (13.19)
4.  Brad Pitt (12.73)
5.  Naomi Watts (12.16)
6.  Matt Damon (12.16)
7.  George Clooney (11.56)
8.  Jennifer Aniston (10.48)
9.  Hugh Jackman (9.90)
10.  Ben Stiller (9.50)

I note that only Jennifer Aniston and Ben Stiller make both lists, indicating that perhaps they are paid based on their talents, which are considerable, but that their mass appeal outweighs their talent.  Which is entirely believable.  Pitt, Clooney and Julia Roberts appear here because they all took big pay cuts to appear in the Oceans Seventy-Eight series of movies, which all did major bank.  Julia Roberts paid back $32.50 for every dollar she made on Oceans Twelve.  Now a quick rundown of some of the other big, bankable stars:

Will Smith - $5.64
Jim Carrey - $4.11
Tom Cruise - $3.99

AND…

Nicole Kidman - $1.01

That means that for every dollar Nicole Kidman is paid, the studios make one dollar and one cent.  ONE CENT PROFIT.  Perhaps it’s time for a pay cut?  This is the second year in a row Kidman has been the worst earner in Hollywood.  Mostly because she demands a huge payday for movies that flop.  The Invasion actually cost the studios $2.70 for every dollar they paid Kidman.  You would think that for that kind of money, she would have at least put a little effort into the role.

All this wonderful information was put together by Forbes, http://www.forbes.com/business/2008/07/22/star-salary-roi-biz-media-cz_dp_ph_0722payback.html and they had a specific method to rank each star.  It was all about their last three movies, and they had to earn at least 5 million dollars to appear in one of those three.  Which means that people like Seth Rogen, who would surely be tops on the list, did not make it based on these criteria.  Go to that link to see exactly how they came up with the rankings.  For those of you who just want to see the rankings, here are the rest:

11.  Renee Zellwegger (9.49)
12.  Kate Winslett (9.48)
13.  Reese Witherspoon (8.91)
14.  Jodie Foster (8.59)
15.  Robert DeNiro (8.34)
16.  Denzel Washington (7.95)
17.  Angelina Jolie (7.16)
18.  Russell Crowe (6.88)
19.  Bruce Willis (6.68)
20.  Johnny Depp (6.51)
21.  Will Smith (5.64)
22.  Sandra Bullock (5.59)
23.  Tom Hanks (5.51)
24.  Leonardo DiCaprio (5.46)
25.  Adam Sandler (5.08)
26.  Cate Blanchett (4.97)
27.  Will Ferrell (4.67)
28.  Drew Barrymore (4.38)
29.  Nicolas Cage (4.16)
30.  Jim Carrey (4.11)
31.  Jennifer Lopez (4.10)
32.  Cameron Diaz (4.03)
33.  Tom Cruise (3.99)
34.  Jennifer Garner (3.62)
35.  Nicole Kidman (1.01)

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 24th, 2008 at 4:01 am and is filed under Lists, Administrative stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.