Here’s more fuel for that fire: For the second year in a row, Sandler tops our list of the Most Overpaid Actors in Hollywood. We looked at the last three movies of the biggest stars in Hollywood and calculated what they were paid and what the movies earned to come up with what is essentially a return on investment number for each star. We estimate that for every $1 Sandler was paid, he returned an average of $3.20.
With Sony likely to undergo a serious reboot due to the hacking, it’s possible that the studio could part ways with Sandler in the process.
However, the comedian can take comfort in the arms of Netflix NFLX +1.73%, which recently gave him a deal to produce four original films for the streaming service. Why would Netflix want to get in bed with Sandler if he’s so overpaid? Because Sandler actually makes a lot more sense for Netflix than he does for Sony. Netflix has reams of data about what their subscribers watch so they know that Sandler’s pictures are among the most popular on the streaming service. Netflix isn’t looking for a traditional profit from the new Sandler movies. They likely won’t hit theaters and Netflix doesn’t have to worry about box office or the (extremely high) cost of marketing and distributing a major motion picture. Instead, they want to hold on to their subscribers and maybe even grab some new ones and exclusive Adam Sandler films might be the perfect way to do that.
To compile our rundown of Hollywood’s Most Overpaid Actors we use earnings estimates from our Celebrity 100 list. We look at the last three films each actor starred in before June 2014, since that was the end of our time frame for the Celeb 100. We don’t include animated films or movies where the actor appears in a cameo or a very small role, or movies that were released on fewer than 2,000 screens.
We then look at the budget and revenue for each film (using numbers from Box Office Mojo and other sources) to come up with operating income. We add together the total compensation for each star on the three movies and the operating income from each movie and then divide to come up with the final return on investment number.
Ranking second behind Sandler is Johnny Depp, whose past three films returned $4.10 for every $1 he was paid. Depp’s Pirates of the Caribbean series is one of the highest grossing of all time with $3.7 billion in box office gross for the first four films. And partially thanks to Depp’s quirky turn as the Mad Matter in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, that film earned $1 billion at the box office.
Those successes have enabled Depp to command big bucks, but he becomes an expensive risk in movies that are less of a sure thing — recent flops like The Lone Ranger and Dark Shadows are a case in point. Luckily for Depp, sequels to both Alice and Pirates are on tap for 2016 and 2017, respectively, which should get him off our list by then.
Third on our list of the most overpaid actors is Ben Stiller, whose recent films returned an average of $4.80 for every $1 he’s been paid. Stiller’s big 2013 movie, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, did fine, earning $180 million on a budget of $90 million, but it wasn’t enough to make up for misses like The Watch and Tower Heist. His latest, Night at the Museum: Secrets of the Tomb, came out too late to be counted on this list but with a $17.3 million opening weekend, it had by far the lowest opening of the series to date.
Two actors who we were surprised to see turn up on the Most Overpaid list were Channing Tatum and Sandra Bullock. Both stars earned millions by taking shares of the profit of incredibly high-performing movies like Magic Mike (which grossed $167 million on a budget of $7 million) and Gravity ($716 million on a $100 million budget). When we crunched the numbers, both actors appeared overpaid. Tatum returned an estimated $6.70 for every $1 paid and Bullock returned an estimated $9 for every $1 paid.
But when you break down the number a bit further, they only appear overpaid because of our methodology. We add up front money (the fee paid to the actor before filming begins) and back end money (the percent of the profits the actors takes if the movie is successful) for the compensation number. Both Tatum and Bullock earned most of their money from back end deals once the films had been incredibly successes. If, for instance, Tatum had been paid $40 million upfront on Magic Mike, that would have been a terrible decision and made him deeply overpaid. (It also would have sent the film’s $7 budget through the roof.) Instead, almost all of his money came from profit and while he still earned an enormous amount of money on the film, it was a payoff for him taking a risk by cutting his fee upfront.
This is the kind of overpaid that studios don’t mind. They much prefer to pay an actor less upfront and have everyone share in a film’s success instead of paying someone a huge fee and then ending up paying the price for a box office failure.
