Over the years, there have been many actors that were paid a massive amount of money to star in comic book movies. For example, everyone knows that Robert Downey Jr. was paid a fortune to portray Iron Man and Jack Nicholson infamously made $50 million when he played the Joker and that movie came out in 1989. On the other end of the spectrum, Andrew Garfield was only paid $500,000 to star in The Amazing Spider-Man.
From the outside looking in, the amount of money that certain stars get paid for a role can be pretty baffling. After all, it certainly seems like Andrew Garfield deserved to be paid more money for The Amazing Spider-Man when you compare his salary to the paycheques other superhero actors received.
In reality, however, except for the cases in which sexism, ageism, and racism caused one actor to get paid less, there usually are valid reasons for salary discrepancies. When it comes to Andrew Garfield’s The Amazing Spider-Man salary, there are three main reasons why he was paid so little.
The State of the Franchise
These days, Spider-Man is one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s most popular characters and every time the web-head is featured in a film, moviegoers show up in droves to see it. However, back when The Amazing Spider-Man was in the planning process, the character’s popularity among film fans had taken a major hit.
After the massive success that Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 enjoyed, almost all superhero movie fans were expecting Spider-Man 3 to perform even better than those films. After all, fans were very excited to see how things turned out now that Harry Osborn knew that Peter Parker is Spider-Man and he’d discovered his father’s cache of Green Goblin weaponry.
Unfortunately for everyone involved, it is very safe to say that Spider-Man 3 fell way short of expectations. While the film did strong business at the box office, it became a joke among moviegoers and was so roundly mocked that Sony opted to reboot the Spider-Man franchise as a whole.
The Amazing Movies
In retrospect, the Amazing Spider-Man movies have a complicated legacy. After all, there are several elements of the two films that deserve to be praised, especially the chemistry that the movies' two leads, Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone, shared. It also should be noted that a lot of Spider-Man fans felt that Garfield did a good job bringing the web-head’s sense of humor to life.
On the other hand, there definitely are aspects of the films that missed the mark in a big way, especially when it comes to The Amazing Spider-Man 2. In fact, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was so poorly received by audiences that Sony ultimately decided to allow Marvel Studios to largely control the next Spidey movie. That is not the kind of decision that gets made lightly which speaks to how disappointed in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 virtually everyone was.
Why So Low?
An extremely successful film when it was released, The Amazing Spider-Man brought in more than $750 million at the box office. On top of that, at that time Sony planned for the movie to spark off a new film franchise and more importantly, an overarching cinematic universe. Considering the big plans Sony had for The Amazing Spider-Man you’d think they would want to keep the movie’s main star, Andrew Garfield, happy by giving him a hefty payday. Instead, they went the other way as Garfield was only paid $500,000 to star in the film.
As for why Andrew Garfield agreed to be paid such a relatively small amount for the film, there are several reasons. First of all, he had to know that Spider-Man 3 was such a bad movie overall that Sony wasn’t as excited about the franchise anymore and taken that into account during contract negotiations. On top of that, Garfield simply wasn’t a big movie star when he agreed to star in the film. Best known for a supporting role in The Social Network at that time, Garfield was great in that film and there was buzz about him but he was far from a household name.
Finally, there is one more reason why Andrew Garfield was only paid $500,000 to star in The Amazing Spider-Man, the contract he signed included an “ascending compensation scale”. According to a deadline.com report, Garfield’s original Spider-Man deal stipulated that he would make $1 million for The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Of course, based on the immense financial success that The Amazing Spider-Man enjoyed, it is very possible that he got a raise for his second Spidey film. According to the aforementioned report, Garfield was also set to be paid $2 million for the planned third Amazing Spider-Man movie that never was produced under his original deal.
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