The 'Deadpool' Bonanza Has Made Ryan Reynolds a Shit-Ton of Money
The upfront fee was large. The backend cut of the runaway box office is cha-ching.
Deadpool is inching ever closer to half a billion dollars at the worldwide box office, and 20th Century Fox’s big gamble with the Marvel character’s $58 million big-screen adaptation is paying off big-time. The Hollywood Reporter has broken down just how much the cast and crew are getting paid for the resounding success, and it looks like Ryan Reynolds is making away with some serious bank.
Reynolds was apparently paid $2 million upfront to appear as the Merc With a Mouth, which is still a fairly big sum for someone whose last two wide-release live action movies — Self/less and R.I.P.D. — managed less than $50 million combined at the box office. His last superhero role in 2011’s Green Lantern netted a meh $116 million in its entire theatrical run. Dude was in a whole bunch of flops and we could be telling a whole different story right now, but Deadpool changed all that.
Because of box office bonuses and backend compensation built in to his contract, Reynolds is reportedly eligible for a total of more than $10 million for his work on the anti-superhero hit. That’s still a fraction of the $40 million-plus that studios reportedly spend to coax Robert Downey Jr. into an Iron Man suit, but remember, Deadpool is a little different.
Ryan Reynolds is rich.
Deadpool has been a passion project of sorts for Reynolds and for Tim Miller, who landed the directing gig after creating a fully CGI test footage video of the bananas highway sequence that wound up in the movie. He’d been working on developing the idea for a standalone Deadpool movie since 2011, hoping to outdo the character’s lackluster appearance in 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
It’s tough for first-time directors, but Miller is seeing some benefits as well. The director was only given his relatively small $250,000 fee upfront, but baked in a part in his contract that adds $250,000 for the total fee for the now inevitable sequel. Unlike Reynolds and the writers, Miller doesn’t have a deal in place to return for a sequel, but be on the lookout for news on that very soon.
Deadpool is slicing and dicing and swearing at people in theaters now.
