Dwayne Johnson has taken some beating at the box office lately. Nevertheless, he has pocketed a record fee for his new Amazon film.
Is Dwayne Johnson still a big name in Hollywood? If we look at the box-office results of his last few films, the star power of the former wrestler may well be questioned. Especially the flop of the costly DC blockbuster Black Adam hit Johnson hard.
Nevertheless, he is still doing well, as a new report by Hollywood insider Matthew Belloni shows. In his newsletter at Puck (via The Direct ), Belloni reveals the fee Johnson reportedly received for his next big streaming movie. It is the action comedy Red One.
Dwayne Johnson gets $50 million for action comedy on Amazon Prime
In Red One, Johnson not only takes on Marvel star Chris Evans, but even gets to deal with Father Christmas (J.K. Simmons). Concrete information about the plot of the Christmas-themed project is not yet known. According to Belloni, Johnson will be paid an incredible 50 million US dollars for the role.
You can watch the trailer for Black Adam here:
This is a record, both for Johnson and for Hollywood. Johnson last earned an average of half his Red One salary. For Jumanji: The Next Level and Red Notice, it was about $23.5 million. For Black Adam, there was one million less, while the blockbusters Jungle Cruise and Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw settle at 22 and 20 million US dollars respectively.
According to the report, this is the largest fee ever received by a Hollywood star. Not even Will Smith can keep up with the 40 million US dollars he collected in the course of the Oscar winner King Richard. Robert Downey Jr. also received no more than 40 million US dollars for his Marvel appearances. How did Johnson manage to surpass both of them? The answer has something to do with Amazon.
Red One is being made exclusively for the Amazon Prime streaming service, which means the film will not get a traditional theatrical release. With a theatrical release, it is often the case that the stars share in the profits once a certain threshold is exceeded. Since this profit-sharing is omitted in a streaming release, Netflix, Amazon and Co. already pay considerable fees in advance.
