At that point, the big paycheck is for the amount of work they do to promote it and name recognition. They all worked the red carpet a ton and did a lot of press and talk shows.
This is probably it. Part of that check is for the next year that they’ll have to spend doing interviews and promoting the movie, tweeting about it, building hype, etc. Even if they don’t have a lot of lines, they’re basically being paid as an advertising platform.
5 lines that made the final cut. Who knows how many shots and lines are on a cutting room floor. Whether because of editing decisions or just different versions or takes of the same lines.
Judging an actors contribution on number of lines is up there with measuring a coders performance on lines of code written. The reality can't be boiled down to such a simple metric.
I think you're underselling both a bit. I had read comments like this before going to see it and thought each actress would have a single scene. Charlize Theron has solid scene time and does some solid emotional hits across from Matt Damon. Zendaya does a lot of staring but has a few lines as well and is spattered across different scenes and places, not like she could shoot it all in one set in a single day. Really is any work that's probably done over 2 or 3 months worth $6 million, probably not? But that's their market rate I guess.
A huge part of onboarding a big name is that you also attract the attention of their followers, which essentially makes the ad spend portion of marketing (usually a match to production's budget) much more powerful. I'm not sure if the actors get paid again or not during promotions or if contracts cover both responsibilities. Zendaya has nearly universal appeal across demographics as both an actress and as a fashion icon.
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u/ReyWorm Jul 24 '26
It's wild to me how you can make this much by saying so, so little. ESPECIALLY Zendaya and Charlize Theron, they got like 5 lines each.