14 DAY TRIAL // They’re so popular they can command multi-million dollar paychecks for a single movie. Their name alone, until not long ago, was enough to sell movie tickets and merchandise and turn a big-budget movie into a smashing hit that makes history. They are the most overpaid actors in Hollywood at the moment, according to a new list made up by Forbes and posted on ABC News.
Said list includes funnyman Will Ferrell as well, who until not long ago was one of the safest bets for any movie studio, what with his never-tiresome child-man role. Ewan McGregor, star of such hits like “Trainspotting,” “Star Wars” and “Moulin Rouge,” is second up in terms of actors who get paid too much in exchange for their worth at the box-office. Eddie Murphy, Tom Cruise, Leonardo DiCaprio, Drew Barrymore, Jim Carrey and Samuel L. Jackson have also made the cut for least value for money.
“To create our list, we looked at the 100 biggest stars in Hollywood. To qualify, each actor had to have starred over the last five years in at least three movies that opened in more than 500 theaters. […] We calculated each star’s estimated earnings on each film, including up-front pay and any earnings from the film’s box office receipts, DVD and TV sales. We then looked at each movie’s estimated budget (not including marketing costs, which are susceptible to accounting chicanery) and box office, DVD and television earnings to figure out an operating income for each film,” Forbes says of how it came to comprise the list.
“We added up each star’s compensation on his or her last three films and the operating income on those films and divided total operating income by the star’s total compensation to come up with each return-on-investment number,” Forbes further reports. The conclusion is that stars no longer have the same power over audiences as they once used to – for factors that are, at times, beyond them – but, at the same time, they continue to earn the same, if not more, as before.
This could also explain why stars like Tom Cruise are already starting to lose their appeal with movie studios. For instance, Forbes says, Cruise goes by a very unusual type of deal, where he gets no money upfront, but rather a percentage of ticket sales. This means that, while the movie studio might not get to recoup the budget it invests in the film, Cruise still gets paid (a lot), which is why high-ups might be avoiding such deals right now.