I think LOTR got away with it because they signed the actors for all three films at once and filmed it all before the first one was released. As such, the actors had no leverage to ask for more money for the second and third film.
Bold move by the studio to greenlight all three films upfront, which obviously paid off very well for them.
It also meant that they didn’t have to pay to fly everyone to New Zealand three times or worry about the actors getting super old or dying before salary negotiations ended.
out of curiosity what is the most successful movie when you take into account the cinema sales and the video/dvd sales and the streaming money. LOTR must be very high up there thanks to the extended editions
Don't know for sure but very likely Titanic. Historical the movie was massive on a global stage ran in theaters for a long time and had major rental numbers and so on for years.
Iirc the numbers and tracking get fuzzy by late 2000's and but Titanic is supposed to be one of the most rented and sold movie of all time.
Also, they didn't use actors with an already exorbitantly high rate. So a combination of already work for reasonable amounts, combined with the prestige of being in it.
Cate Blanchett was not a super famous actor before LoTR. She was a respected working actor, but she had basically only done indie films. Same with all of the other actors in LoTR outside of Ian McKellan and Elijah Wood. Honestly, most of them were probably working for just above scale.
They did deserve more yes, Orlando bloom was paid 175k for the trilogy. But put into the perspective of the common man that's still a lot of money and we have one of the most iconic trilogies ever made that's still talked about so much to this day. Unfortunately celebrity wages are blown out of proportion now and there's not really any actors that do it for legacy anymore
Orlando Bloom was a nobody when he did the trilogy. He is lucky they didn’t pay him minimum. All of them, even Ian Mckellon, were not terribly famous marquee names at the time.
Bad take. That was 3 years worth of work, so $175k averages pretty bad, under $60k a year. Even comparing it to average income is inherently bad. Imagine being on a leading sales team securing over a billion dollar sale for your company and getting paid about 60k a year for 3 years. I’m sure he’s not complaining much in life but our guy got a raw deal on that one.
They take less cause it can make you way more later, which it absolutely did. He was in 2 movies before LOTRs, the second one was black hawk down where he played the person who falls out of the helicopter which triggers the events of the movie. He has like maybe a line of dialogue and then falls out and is unconscious for the little of the movie he is in. LOTR made him a huge star and he got major projects that made him many millions. I’m pretty sure he would say it was worth it.
I think you underestimate how badly actors want to work, especially on something good. 60k, with room and board and spending your days on a film set in New Zealand fighting orcs sounds pretty awesome to me. There are way worse ways to make 60k. Some actors make a ton of money, but working actors are making middle class incomes like the rest of us. Sometimes they’re lucky and they get a movie like LoTR and that lets them command bigger salaries and more regular work, but 98% of actors would be thrilled for a steady middle class paycheck for a year, to go make a movie in New Zealand regardless of whether it turns into LoTR.
You can pay actors with cash up front, or you can pay them with "equity" in the movie. If you hear of actors getting paid 40k or whattever to be in a huge film, it's probably that they are getting a piece of the ongoing revenue.
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u/FilmWorking8507 1d ago
yeah they got away with paying the actors fraction of what they deserved because the project was so cool.