By: Dorothy Pomerantzby
When you’re a top star, you earn a lot of money–but along with that bigger paycheck comes bigger expectations. You’re supposed to be able to “open” a movie–meaning you can guarantee a decent opening weekend box office draw.
If you’re a star and your movie flops, it looks that much worse when you’re earning a paycheck north of $15 million.
That’s what happened to Will Ferrell with Land of the Lost. The big-budget film based on the ’70s kiddies cartoon was supposed to be a big hit. But with an estimated $100 million budget, it earned only $69 million total at the global box office. That flop puts Ferrell at the top of our list of Hollywood’s Most Overpaid Actors. For every $1 Ferrell was paid, his films returned an average $3.35.
This is the second year Ferrell has topped our list, but things could turn around for the funny man next year. His last film, The Other Guys, hit theaters well after our June 1 deadline for this list, so we didn’t include it in our calculations. But the movie did pretty well at the box office, earning $160 million on an estimated budget of $100 million.
And this weekend Ferrell’s newest movie, Megamind, topped the box office with $48 million. Ferrell’s star power definitely helped the DreamWorks Animation film open strong but it won’t help him in future over paid lists. We don’t count animated features, since stars tend to take pay cuts and are not the real draw.
To create our list we looked at the 36 highest-earning actors in Hollywood. To qualify, each had to have starred in at least three movies in the past five years that opened in more than 500 theaters. Movies that opened after June 1 of this year are not counted.
We used data gathered for our annual Celebrity 100 list to calculate each star’s estimated earnings on each film (including up-front pay and any earnings from the movie’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.
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 a return-on-investment number. The final number represents an average of how much a studio earns for every dollar paid.
Comedians fare particularly badly on this list because it’s very hard to translate humor overseas. Ferrell’s The Other Guys earned $119 million in the U.S. and only $41 million abroad. Compare that to a movie like Angelina Jolie’s recent thriller Salt: That film also earned $118 million in the U.S. but brought in an additional $173 million overseas. There’s no language barrier when it comes to kicking butt.
Our list features six actors who are best known for their work in comedies. Eddie Murphy ranks second with a $4.45 return for every $1 he gets paid. The comedian once seemed like a sure thing in family-friendly flicks like Doctor Dolittle and Daddy Day Care. But his more recent films have been real flops. In 2008 Meet Dave brought in only $51 million at the global box office. The next year Imagine That did even worse, earning just $22 million.
Don’t cry for Eddie Murphy, though. Thanks to his voice work as Donkey in the Shrek films, he’ll be raking in the dough for years to come. But his pay day on live-action flicks is sure to take a hit.
Funny man Seth Rogen ranks fourth with $6.75. The actor, who still doesn’t earn anywhere near the Eddie Murphys and Will Ferrells of the world, takes a hit on our list because of a movie called Funny People.
Films from producer Judd Apatow are usually catnip for Hollywood, because they don’t cost much to make and usually earn gobs of money at the box office. Funny People was an exception to the rule. It cost an estimated $75 million to produce and earned only $71 million at the global box office. (Only about 28% of that box office came from overseas.) That hurt Rogen and his high-paid costar Adam Sandler, who ranks ninth on our list. For every $1 Sandler was paid, his films earned an average $8.45.
Sandler is sure to crawl off of our list next year thanks to the movie Grown Ups, which came out after our deadline. The comedy starred Sandler and all of his (lower-priced) funny best friends, including fellow Saturday Night Live alums David Spade and Chris Rock. It cost an estimated $80 million to make, but earned a healthy $270 million at the box office.
Rogen might have a tougher time in the coming year. His next big film is the superhero movie The Green Hornet. The film was originally scheduled for a Christmas release but has since been pushed back to Jan. 14 (never a good sign). Sony is also working to convert the film into 3-D, which could be a problem. A bad conversion could hurt box office revenue, and if Sony decides the 3-D isn’t good enough and then opts to release the movie in 2-D only–as Warner Bros. just did with the newest Harry Potter movie–the extra expense will put even more pressure on the film to do well.
