While $500,000 isn’t a number to scoff at, it’s far less than the millions of dollars Sony was paying to Tobey Maguire to play the role of Spider-Man, but that’s exactly what the studio will give to British actor Andrew Garfield for his first outing in the superhero’s shoes.
Sony officials are said to have scooped up the British actor after they were impressed with his upcoming role in The Social Network about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
As a largely unknown actor in the U.S. Sony was able to pay Garfield a pittance, although he should see at least $1 million for the second movie and $2 million for the third, still a far cry from the millions paid to Maguire for the same role.
So why such a crappy salary? According to the team at Get The Big Picture:
“To begin with, although Marvel isn’t pulling the strings on this franchise the way it does the Paramount crop of Avengers-related movies, we know those salaries are low, low, low,” adding “In a competitive comparison, then, Sony can point to those dealings for a reason to keep this cost down. Garfield is also not as big a name as Maguire was when he signed the deal; Tobey had already led Pleasantville and did very good work in Wonder Boys. Another reason for the rather low salary is the studio’s insistence that these movies are cheaper from now on. This one has an early budget of about $80 million, a fraction of what the Spidey sequels cost…”
We’ll just have to wait and see if the parts 2 and 3 still only pay Garfield at such low levels, these things have a way of working themselves out once a star hits popular demand levels.
