14 DAY TRIAL // “Fifty Shades of Grey” came out on Valentine’s Day and will make over $550 million (€519.5 million) at the international box office, industry analysts say. If that’s not a good reason to ask for a salary renegotiation, nothing is.
The Hollywood Reporter says that leading couple Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson are holding the film’s box office success against Universal, as leverage in salary renegotiations. They want a 7-figure raise, which would put them in the same league as the stars of “Twilight” or “Hunger Games,” in terms of earnings.
That means that they would jump from $250,000 (€236,046), which is how much they made each for the first film (plus some bonuses, but no backend compensation), to an estimated $10 million (€9.4 million) each, to resume their roles in the second “Fifty Shades” movie.
Their contract is a multi-picture one, so there’s no doubt that they will return for the sequel, but their salary isn’t fixed. Speculation online claims that the rumor that came out earlier this month, about how Dornan wanted out because he didn’t want to be mocked by critics anymore or embarrassed to have his wife see his work, was also “leverage.”
Either way, it’s not uncommon for actors to be paid peanuts (by Hollywood’s standards, even when they’re relative unknowns) for a first installment in a new film franchise, and then be upgraded to an A-lister’s paycheck when it turns out to be a massive commercial success.
Universal is yet to officially announce the sequel and a release date for it, but E.L. James, who wrote the novels on which the franchise is based and acts as producer, left no room for doubt about it in one of her most recent interviews.