This week, various media outlets ran with the story that Gal Gadot only made $300,000 for Wonder Woman, while Henry Cavill made $13 million for Man of Steel. When I covered it yesterday, I chose to use the NY Post’s Decider coverage, because I thought they hedged really well, and they noted that it was likely Cavill made $13 million… with contractual bonuses, given how well the film performed at the box office (also known as a “backend”). Many actors have those kinds of contracts, especially for bigger films with bloated budgets. It’s not always about your salary, it’s about the size of your backend. My point is that it’s possible Gal Gadot’s salary for Wonder Woman was really $300,000, but she might have a backend deal similar to Henry Cavill. Sources pretty much said that to The Hollywood Reporter:
Contrary to a story that Wonder Woman’s Gal Gadot made millions less than her DC counterpart Henry Cavill as Superman, the two were paid the same for their debut standalone outings. That’s according to a source familiar with both negotiations, who told The Hollywood Reporter that Gadot made the same amount upfront if not slightly more on Wonder Woman than Cavill made on 2013’s Man of Steel.
The alleged salary discrepancy story was based on a post from Elle magazine, which cobbled together salary information that had previously appeared in various publications and did not differentiate between upfront salary vs. bonuses and performance escalators. The story was later updated but caused a stir on the internet as Hollywood’s gender gap on wages has become a popular issue. The Elle story said Gadot was paid $300,000 for Wonder Woman vs. $14 million Cavill received for Man of Steel. The source called the latter figure “ridiculous.”
Warner Bros., the studio behind both movies, declined to comment.
A salary of low- to mid-six figures is standard fare for Hollywood tentpoles, especially for actors with short track records; Gadot had bit parts in movies such as Date Night and Knight and Day before landing a more substantial but still supporting role in the Fast & Furious movies. Chris Hemsworth made $150,000 for his starring debut in 2011’s Thor, for example. Adam Driver was paid in the $500,000 range for his part in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, according to sources. Felicity Jones, who had an Oscar nomination under her belt before landing the lead in Rogue One, was paid more than $1 million for the Star Wars stand-alone.
These salary figures do not take into account box-office bonuses, which hit when certain benchmarks are hit. And actors gets substantial increases when it comes to sequels, even in spite of having option agreements and especially if a movie is as successful as Wonder Woman (the film has earned $574 million worldwide to date). Gadot’s deal will very likely be renegotiated.
Yeah, even though Warner Bros declined to comment, you know they’re behind this THR piece. They really don’t want to be known as the studio which short-changed the first huge (bigly) superheroine. That being said, I believe this story. I think Henry Cavill and Gal Gadot were probably paid similarly with their baseline salaries for WW and Man of Steel, and they probably got similar contractual backend deals/bonus structures. If WW makes more money than Man of Steel (which will likely happen), it’s more than possible that Gadot might end up making more money than Cavill. Hopefully. And I do hope she renegotiates for the WW sequel too.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
I hope she gets everything she deserves and definitely renegotiates for the sequel. Even playing a bit of hardball if she has to. She has become as much Wonder Woman as Hemsworth became Thor. Don’t let the studio think they can replace instead of paying her full market value.
Hemsworth still barely gets over $5-6 million for his Thor outings, including his back-end deal. He’s not worth that much to Marvel at all. If Thor 3 is a better, more successful film than it’s predecessors his stock may rise a bit, but right now he’s pretty much the last Marvel actor you’d want to emulate.
Wonder Woman HAS to make more money than the Second Worst Batman and the Worst Superman.
She deserves it. It’s still a man’s world, even if the man is that Cavill guy. He has the physique of Superman, but is missing something for me. It didn’t help when in his personal life he did the staged coffee runs with Caley? look at me from The Big Bang Theory? Anyway, Wonder Woman earned every nickel and more. The times they are a changing, hopefully..
While WB probably did have something to do with this story, enough reporters who have familiarity with the way salaries work followed the sourcing of the original post and found it lacking. As pointed out by commenters yesterday, the writer didn’t seem to understand how HW salaries work, or bothered to check the numbers.
WB will pay to keep her.
The movie was awesome and she was very good in it. I loved taking my daughter.
The original report from Elle Magazine (lol) was wrong. Plain and simple. But Elle couldn’t help itself and just ran with that clickbait article. And then of course other gossip publications ran with the story without ever fact checking it…until publications within the industry put an end to it and rightfully so. Gal Gadot was paid pretty much the same as anyone else in a first film for a franchise. Now, the gender pay gap in Hollywood is very real, so I wouldn’t want to be construed as denying that in any respect. But Chris Hemsworth got $200,000 for Thor; Chris Evans got $300,000 for The First Avenger; I believe RDJ’s paycheque for Iron Man was in the range of $500,000. In regards to Cavil, I’ve read that he actually got paid less than Amy Adams for MOS which makes sense of course. Jennifer Lawrence got paid $500,000 for the first hunger games. The only exception to all of these was Ryan Reynolds getting $2 million up front AND getting a back end deal but he was also a producer on Deadpool so that’s why he was able to negotiate a better pay for a first franchise film. After the first film does well, that is when a renegotiation occurs. It’s very rare for the first film to be the big pay day.
Gadot was pretty close to a nobody when cast; she wouldn’t have any leverage to negotiate a large fee. And based on how her peers got paid for their first film in a big franchise…this whole ordeal was a much todo about nothing.
+1
And quite a few posters in that earlier thread, gave clear cut examples of this being the same precedent for both male and female stars in the Marvel Universe.
Some were bigger names than Gadot.
And yikes at Tom Hiddleston being $crwed with Loki pay.
People talking about her making loads and loads more now, that’s not really how it works. Even now most of the Marvel cast are making under 10 million a film including their back-end deals. They slowly went from under $500,000, to a few million, to $5-8 million. Not from under $500,000 to $20 million.
Very few people are making full blown movie star out of all these franchises. RDJ made a fortune because he basically became totally invaluable to Marvel after Iron Man 1. ScarJo and Ben Affleck made a lot because they came in as fairly well established household names. Same with Will Smith in Suicide Squad.
I wouldn’t be expecting Gadot to make anything like 15-20 million from now on. WW is doing well, but it’s one part of a much larger picture. Her bargaining power is going to depend on how the next DC films fare. If Aquaman and Flash are mediocre, DC might start building their world more around WW, like Marvel and Iron Man. In that case she’ll have a ton of leverage. But if those films do well, then she’ll have less bargaining power because she’ll just be one of many DC stars. It’s also going to depend on what she does outside of WW. If JLaw had just had Hunger Games and nothing else noteworthy, she wouldn’t have made much for the sequels. Getting critical nods and/or headlining other successful franchises/blockbusters makes a big difference.
Jessie you are 100% correct. I didn’t mean that the sequel is what gets the stars $20 million contracts. Just that the sequel is usually what gets them into 7 figures. The only exceptions are RDJ and Scarjo…although the latter may very well lose her bargaining power with how poor her last two films did. Jlaw was able to ask for more because well she was the face of The Hunger Games but also because of her awards season success. Hugh Jackman got paid a ton for Wolverine because the X-men universe revolved around his character for the most part. Ryan Reynolds will probably get a huge pay day for Deadpool 2 because Deadpool is all Fox has going for it at the moment…similar to RDJ with Iron Man….well that and Ryan will make a ton of money from being a producer so he is getting paid either way but even acting wise he can demand a huge pay day from Fox. I also heard Chris Pratt got a huge pay raise for GOTG2…I don’t have the exact figures though so it could be that he went from the standard $300K a film to $5-6 million that the Marvel actors typically get.
Gal Gadot will more than likely end up with a contract similar to Evans and Hemsworth. They each get $5-6 million per film now.
But that is typically how a franchise movie works.
Where she’ll make her money is gross points. That makes all the difference when dealing with huge blockbusters that gross $500 to $900 million+. Of course her base pay will rise, to somewhere in the low to mid 7 figures I’m guessing. But that’s not the payday.
WB has had low luck with it’s other superhero franchises. WW is a superstar right out of the gate, critically and commercially. And she’s played by a solo lead; there are no other superheros sharing space as in the Avengers or BvsS. And Marvel has allegedly also been know to be cheap-ish with it’s talent in terms of profit-sharing: will WB has the same luxury here?
I see a Downey/Iron Man situation here (or am hopeful to see this). The WW sequels are bound to do huge box office, they have a nearly in-built viewership now. Her agent I assume will negotiate for generous points on the gross take of future sequels. That’s where she’ll net many extra millions.
Our girl Gal is worth $o much more. WONDER WOMAN!!! I love her
I long for the day when a poster featuring Gadot, Cavill, and Affleck will either feature her in pants and sleeves or the men in battle-tank tops and booty shorts.
Lol!!
I just want to say that I finally saw WW and it was amazing. Even though I’m almost 30, I can’t describe the feeling of watching a strong, independent, powerful woman on screen, surrounded by women like her, and even by strong men, too. After growing up being told all I could be was a “pretty princess” I’m happy young girls can now choose from Jedis to superheroes to princesses.
It makes me so sad that your film education has been ‘princess’ roles for women.
Women used to be the dominant feature of hollywood films in the early days. The 1930s and 40s were fantastic for women’s films.
After that it swopped around to the lack of roles we have now. Every year since someone decided to start recording stats on the subject, women and strong female roles have gradually disappeared and or turned into stupid, sexually objectifying roles that reinforce ‘princess’ idea.
Strong women in films are still available in non english language films.
@LAK – I was about to say – only princesses? I guess since I grew up in the era when the Hollywood movies of the 1930s and 1940s were omnipresent on TV (I watched a lot more of those movies in the 1960s and 1970s than I did the movies which came out at the time), I never thought of women on film as primarily princesses. Barbara Stanwyck? Bette Davis? Katherine Hepburn? Joan Crawford? – and on and on. And those fantastic pre-Code films with snappy dialog and tough dames – and the great thing is they were playing real women – not creatures with superpowers (not to take away from WW – glad it is doing so well!) Yeah it is good to go outside of the current Hollywood blockbuster or nothing mindset.
Justme: me too.
It’s eternally disappointing to me that women and non white races have either been reduced to stereotypical fluff roles or that newer generations are growing up with this ‘princess’ trope as the only thing they see.
A ‘princesses’ on screen when i was growing up was either She-Ra or Xena.
There were lots of really good female action roles that were better than WW and didn’t do their job in their underpants except for a very good reason eg Linda Hamilton in TERMINATOR 2 or Sigourney Weaver in ALIEN. Infact when did we go from Xena Warrior princess to Carrie Fisher’s mostly helplesss damsel in distress in a bikini princess who has to be rescued every time as the standard?
The Bride in KILL BILL series…scratch that, ALL the women in that film were badass.
Pam Grier in JACKIE BROWN.
Even the cartoons were badass. Non of this sexualised Harlequin per recent movie. Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman character has never been bettered. Ditto Eartha Kitt in the same role. Grace Jones as a Bond girl. Etc
I was talking from when I was a CHILD. When I wanted to be a freaking Jedi and kept being told that only boys were Jedis. I didn’t want to be Princess Leia. And yes, I grew up watching Disney films.
I grew up in the 90s. All we had to watch were Disney Princesses and vapid, stupid, sexual women.
Cee: i’ve never understood how or why Princess Leia became an icon when for all her pseudo badassery she spends most of one film in a bikini and rest of others being rescued. She may as well be Sleeping beauty.
Going by your self-admitted age, you would have been too young for *Xena Warrior Princess which ran from 1995 – 2001. Plus Linda Hamilton in T2, Sigourney Weaver in ALIEN/S and all the other fabulously strong female characters on TV and film listed by everyone here and more, but i still don’t understand how you missed the Spice girls and their message of girl power which could have propelled you into holding fast your desire to be a Jedi rather than a damsel in distress princess.
* given how violence is now acceptable on tv, you would have been allowed to watch Xena if it were showing today at the age you were then.
I am particularly sad at the difference a decade can make because i grew up on those same films, but no one would have told me that i couldn’t be a Jedi if i’d expressed that desire.
Then again, the 80s / 90s brand of feminism was of the warrior queen kind, shoulder pads and all that. Even where women were behaving badly, they were seen to be warriors eg Alexis Carrington on the tv show Dynasty was easily the equal of JR Ewing on Dallas.
Somewhere in the early 00s, the message changed and disney princesses became the rage. Retrograde messages about our abilities became the norm. The rise of the perjorative term feminazi. And women started saying they weren’t feminists and that’s reflected in our pop culture.
I encourage you to watch older films and expand into non english language films. You’ll feel so much better about the messaging though possibly depressed that we do not do that anymore such that a film like WW is celebrated as a long awaited anomaly.
Sorry for the lecture.
That sounds a lot like the feeling I got watching that lightsaber in Rey’s hands in The Force Awakens (I think I had something of an out-of-body experience there), or Jyn – a non-sexualised action heroine!- in Rogue One.
We used to have what feels like so many female-led action movies (Pam Grier back in the 70s, Ripley of Alien, The Bride in Kill Bill, p much all Angelina Jolie’s blockbusters), I can’t believe how retrograde Hollywood is sometimes, for all their talk of ‘art’ and being liberal.
Yup. I mean, I was happy when Belle liked to read instead of being all about boys… but other than that, girls only had Disney princesses to look up to (Mulan being the most amazing Disney Princess, EVER).
I would have loved to dress up as a Ninja Turtle or a Jedi when I was a kid. I was at Disney 2 years ago and loved watching 5 year old girls dressed as Jedis. I was giddy for them.
As thankful as I am for Celebitchy for acknowledging that the first article was wrong, it contains a lot of what I’m seeing in other articles. A lot of “well it’s not our fault. We’re just posting what others have said”. Sorry but no, it is your fault. You put out an an article that was deliberately misleading to push an agenda. The irony is that you also recently posted an article addressing why you didn’t post about the shooting of the congressmen. In that article you said you don’t post about things like that because you don’t have all the facts by the time you publish the articles online and that you are a celebrity/Hollywood gossip site that only publishes politics when they have some Hollywood element to it. The wage gap IS a political subject. If you are going to discuss it from the Hollywood perspective, then you should follow your own self imposed rules of finding out all the facts before putting out an article. Many commenters (who do not work in reporting on Hollywood) seemed to know a lot more than the author about how hollywoods pay system works.
If I sound upset about this, it’s because I am. This bogus story has not only taken away from WW, Gadots, and Jenkins success but has also hurt the fight to close the wage gap. There are still too many people out there that deny it’s happening and that people are getting hysterical over nothing. This story has done nothing but add fuel to their fire.
TL;DR we have it hard enough trying to fight for equality, don’t make it harder. If you’re going to address something like this, have all the facts first. This is going to come around and bite us in the butt
Apparently Chris Evans was paid $300k for the first Captain America and then the sequals turned into a multi million pay package the same will happen with WW.
In any job, there’s something called paying your dues. Whenever you’re starting somewhere, you can’t expect to be paid the same as someone who’s been building a resume for years and has a established position in their industry.
What I mean is, I feel like Gal Gadot got a fair base salary for her first big solo movie . You have to understand that it’s not just about the money. It’s also an opportunity for her to launch her career, and it worked. 300K is a lot of money for a fairly unknown actor. Now that the movie is a success and that she’s proven her worth, it would be shameful if they didn’t up that salary a lot for her second film, and that should generate backlash. But making such a big deal of something that happens in every industry, for men and women, is absurd. This isn’t an example of a sexist wage gap.