Ladies and gentlemen, the only Hollywood money metric worth caring about is here. Forbes has named Mark Wahlberg as the most overpaid actor for 2017.
Forbes works the ranking out based on how much money the actor’s films made as compared to their paycheque for the film. Wahlberg blew the competition away this year, with his chunky upfront payouts absolutely not justifying the box office returns.
Wahlberg was paid a ridiculous $68 million this year – which is literally more than the entire box office gross for his Boston bombings flick Patriot’s Day, which was a certified flop. His three wide releases prior to June 1, 2017, returned just $4.40 at the box office for every $1 he was paid on them. Keep in mind this is the 2017 financial year – Transformers was released later, and might have saved him.
In second place was Christian Bale, who is there entirely because his Armenian genocide movie The Promise crashed harder than almost anything else made this year. It only made back 11% of its $90-million plus production costs.
It’s worth remembering that though Wahlberg’s films allegedly making $4.40 for every $1 spent on his salary seems good to the average punter, the intricacies of Hollywood accounting mean that this number is on the absolute highest end of the spectrum, and the situation is likely significantly worse.
Rounding out the top five are Channing Tatum, Denzel Washington and Brad Pitt. Fellas! You simply gotta start pulling your socks up.
