December 15, 2024 04:12 PM IST
Tom Cruise, Shah Rukh Khan or even Johnny Depp have not been able to charge as much as this actor during his peak in the early 2000s.
Six decades ago, actors in Hollywood were flirting with million-dollar salaries for the first time. Stars like Marlon Brando, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were among the first to charge this much money for a single film. Less than two generations later, one star earned a hundred times as much, setting a record that was not broken for more than two decades. This is the story of the actor who earned a salary of $156 million for a single film production. ,Also read: Just one hit for the world’s richest actor, but net worth $1.4 billion, richer than Tom Cruise and Shahrukh Khan,
World’s highest paid actor
Keanu Reeves broke the bank after the success of The Matrix in the late ’90s. Suddenly, he became the most sought-after actor in Hollywood. Warner Bros. immediately signed him to co-produce two sequels – Reloaded and Revolution. For the two films (shot and produced simultaneously), Keanu received an advance salary of $30 million, as well as a share in profits and the promise of residual income. The Matrix Reloaded and Revolution were released in 2003, and had a combined box office take of $1.2 billion. Both the films have been streamed on OTT and telecast several times on TV. All this brought Keanu’s earnings from both to $156 million, the highest ever for any actor in a single production.
How did Keanu defeat other superstars?
The fact that the Matrix sequels were released as two films instead of one helped them earn more at the box office, which meant that Keanu Reeves could have made a profit of over $100 million. At the time, the record was $94 million earned by Alec Guinness for Star Wars, and this included several re-releases. The figure of $156 million is so high that no actor has been able to come close to it in the last 21 years. For example, Tom Cruise’s highest salary to date is $100 million. Back home, Shah Rukh Khan’s salary for Jawan was even less at $40 million.
However, on record there is an asterisk in the entry because Keanu’s earnings were spread over two films. The record for a single film is held by Bruce Willis, Tom Cruise and Will Smith, all of whom have earned $100 million for a single film. Bruce Willis did it for The Sixth Sense, Will Smith did it for Men in Black 3, and Tom Cruise did it for three movies – Mission Impossible 2, War of the Worlds and Top Gun: Maverick.
Incidentally, Keanu Reeves never got such a big salary again. For the John Wick series, which catapulted him to global stardom, the actor charged between $15–30 million per film.
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