Last Week, Forbes’s ‘OVERPAID ACTORS’ Article Buzzed + Retweeted Throughout The Media
Funny how Forbes publishes these articles on actors’ salaries, when they do. They give a link to what they call ‘the list’ and then there’s a surprise. A paragraph of text explaining the financial ‘science’ behind how they comprised their actor inclusion and order…then, instead of a text list of names, they publish a huge photo of the per web page. Or 2 or 3 actors photos, same actor, different pages; often with full page ads blocking each photo to endure or click away.
Forbes forces the reader to have to click to a new page to see the photo of each actor. That’s a lot of clicks to see the entire Forbes-hoo-hah-financial-experts-list. Of each actor whom Forbes claims is overpaid.
Which makes a lot of big photos, some repeated big photos, of someone they toss virtual rotten eggs at. (Or- virtual actor dartboard, usable at next financial nerds party?)
Actors. Big time actors, who bring in a lot of readers. The whole magiggy brings Forbes a whole lot of regular notice. Problems are: The intention, and the accounting, may not be on the level. Or, in true mathmatically, scientific, verbiage: not reliable. Invalid.
Here’s Forbes’s summary paragraph that explains their method, just before their actor slideshow:
Hollywood’s Most Overpaid Actors
To compile our list we used information gathered for the Celebrity 100 to look at the
last three non animation movies each actor starred in over that lastthree years. We added each actor’s upfront and backend pay on all three movies to come up with a total compensation number. We then added up the operating income of the three movies to come up with a total operating income number and then divided total operating income by total compensation. Each return on investment number represents how much the studio is paid for every dollar invested in the star.
Each actor’s photo fills the computer screen. Which means that Drew Barrymore filled my computer screen. Billboarded by Forbes as a bad financial investment. Isn’t that what they are touting?
In this particular article, they push their reputational financial expertise and while using Hollywood celebrity photos as a reader lure. In other words, Forbes is using the most popular actors to get wider mainstream readers and attention (vs their regular financial eggheads); as they diss these actors’ bankability and possibly cause them some career damage. All under the guise of ‘financial expertise’ and even show the ‘financial science’ behind their calculations. Behind their huge photos of who in their subtext, shouldn’t be in the huge photo across your screen. Even though they know that it is precisely these same actors, who are selling this current issue of their magazine.
David Poland of MCN [Movie City News] is the only film journalist who I have ever seen take on Forbes, and their lists on actors’ earnings.
David Poland of MCN. Photo cred Indiewire.financial cajonees a swift, and smart, kick where it was asked for. (Last year, when Will Ferrell was peaking at #1 on Forbes.)
Could Poland be the only one with assessment skills, vision, brains?? I’ve seen bulls**t marketing fly at all bottom feeder levels on the net and in social media and get retweeted, as fact too…And it’s methods, mathmatically sound, no? Ya’d think Forbes was trustworthy, simple dollars and cents? Not.
David Poland Aptly Assesses All Of The Actors’ Lists That Yearly, Forbes Puts Out, As Un-Factual Finances.
Poland calls their accounting an irrelevant system in assessing film actor worth, value. Poland aptly points out that movies are a different kind of business and require a different equation for accounting. Outright, Poland calls Forbes’s method ‘stupid’. And not factual, but a marketing scam.
David Poland’s analysis last year; which changed nil at Forbes this year:
The list is by its entire methodology, FALSE. (And is nothing but self-promotion that requires you to click through at least a dozen ad-loaded pages to see… there is no list offered.)
“We used data gathered for our annual Celebrity 100 list…”
Also bullshit.
“…to calculate each star’s estimated earnings on each film (including up-front pay and any earnings from the movie’s box-office receipts, DVD and TV sales).”
In the history of Forbes sucking up to the film industry to get readers, they have rarely gotten an estimate right.
“We then looked at each movie’s estimated budget (not including marketing costs, which are susceptible to accounting chicanery) and box-office, DVD and television earnings to figure out an operating income for each film.”
Not including marketing costs? Are they f-ink kidding? And they think the rest of the numbers are etched in stone somewhere?
“We added up each star’s compensation on his or her last three films…”
Also pulled directly out of their asses.
“…and the operating income on those films, and divided total operating income by the star’s total compensation to come up with a return-on-investment number. The final number represents an average of how much a studio earns for every dollar paid.”
And if a studio calculated numbers so lazily, they would all be out of business.
They also discount animation, which it’s true, is not always star driven… but in many cases, is marketed heavily based on the stars, who are paid a ton for sequels, particularly, because of the celebrity value to the bottom line. Think of how much DWA could have earned on Shrek sequels without paying eight-figures and back-end to Myers, Diaz, and Murphy. But they didn’t. And it isn’t a charity.
But let’s start with Victim #1, Will Ferrell. Not a very complicated story. He tends to hit every other time. But he also tends to make movies with pretty reasonable budgets against the numbers he delivers. He’s had one very expensive commercial miss in his career. It was last summer.
Forbes is dead wrong when it claims that his price requires massive hits to make money. I’ve been writing about the math on comic actors for 15 years. They are – they being Jim Carrey or Will Ferrell or Martin Lawrence or Ben Stiller or Vince Vaughn or Sacha Baron Cohen or Eddie Murphy or Adam Sandler, and a few others over the years – all worth the money so long as they make movies with tight below-the-line budgets. They are all too expensive when they start to make movies that require $60m – $100m below the line budgets.
By creating the arbitrary notion of this list being measured based on the last three films released… until last June 1 (LAZY! What other possible reason can they have for not doing a few hours of reporting on this before attacking people in print?)… they put Will Ferrell in position to count only one success and two down movies… the two worst performing movies of his starring career. Starting with Old School, Ferrell has had 11 relevant-to-a-commercial-analysis (meaning, starring) wide releases in his career. In his case, one should throw out Curious George, since it really wasn’t sold as a Will Ferrell movie. If there were Megamind numbers, they would be completely relevant, as the film has been sold as a Will Ferrell movie.
Elf is still the positive outlier. Worldwide, Talladega Nights and The Other Guys are almost the same gross, both around $160m. But Other Guys doesn’t count because it only opened three months before this list was launched. Uh-huh.
Between those two big hits, by comedy standards, three films between $44m and $69m (one a drama with a little comedy) and two over $128m, all worldwide.
Hollywood knows this. Hollywood can be stupid, but It is not blind.
Sony, which first got into bed with Ferrell by bringing him in to support Nicole Kidman and Nora Ephron on Bewitched, has made four movies with him as star, and the only one that didn’t hit $100 million domestic was the one dramedy. DreamWorks/Paramount also had a $100 million hit with him. Universal (which also suffered Kicking & Screaming in 2005) and an under siege New Line were the two companies that got rotten fruit from Ferrell. Semi-Pro just was a dud. And Land Of The Lost was that one example of Ferrell and a studio overreaching his box office muscle.
Calling him out as overpaid is just lazy and stupid.
#2 on the list is Eddie Murphy… always a popular target. And truth told, he had two car wrecks back-to-back in Meet Dave and Imagine That. He has vowed not to work at Fox again, not because he hated Meet Dave, but because he hated how they sold it and feel that they undermined its potential success. That doesn’t mean it’s fair, but it’s how he feels. Paramount, which released his last two non-animated hits, Dreamgirls and Norbit, gets off a little easier.
Norbit is a classic situation for Murphy. $160m worldwide, but media insists on painting it as a flop. $165m for Daddy Day Care is similarly dismissed.
Murphy may be at the end of his run. He’s going to have to make better choices if he wants to remain an elite. But he’s got another Brian Robbins comedy under his belt and he decided to make an ensemble comedy with Brett Ratner, Ben Stiller, and a bunch of good talent.
But to call a guy who hasn’t opened a movie – and that is what stars are really paid for – to less than $12 million in the last decade, with the exception of these two back-to-back disasters and the dumped Pluto Nash, is dumb. I’m not saying he is not vulnerable, but there is no reason to think he is “over” or, for that matter, overpaid for what he brings to the box office.
Denzel is the next STUPID name thrown onto this list. An actor who has been as consistent as anyone out there. His movies open to $20 million or more… the only exceptions this decade being the films he has directed and in which he wasn’t really the star. The number can go up, but he simply never misses.
And with the exception of Deja Vu, he doesn’t generate big (relative) numbers overseas. He just doesn’t. And every studio that hires him and funds his films knows this. His international has gotten a bit better, but he suffers the hard reality that black actors don’t tend to sell very well overseas. Every film that has cracked $65m overseas – with the exception of Deja Vu – has co-starred a major white star.
Budgets are adjusted to this. And Denzel is worth every penny he earns. He is money in the bank.
Seth Rogan? Seriously? Not even worth the time to analyze. He’s starred in five movies. Shut up.
Tom Cruise hit the superstar wall with Mission: Impossible 3 in 2006. He’s only made three films since. Lions For Lambs was a non-starter for all involved and no one got anything close to their asking price. Valkyrie opened to over $20m domestic and overpeformed expectations, hitting $200m worldwide to be somewhere around breakeven (due to overruns and a very expensive – for MGM at the time – marketing effort). Knight & Day… $257m worldwide.
It’s not $400 million… and that’s what “they” wanted. Yes. Most overpaid? Depends on what the deals actually were. As I just noted, LFL wasn’t a serious pay day. His percentage on Valkyrie, which he also produced, would be interesting to know… you can be sure that Forbes doesn’t know. And it’s possible that he made a little bit too much on Knight, if Fox pushed him into an upfront deal. But Tom Rothman isn’t known for throwing money at talent. So…
#6 Drew Barrymore – Hasn’t had a major hit since 2004. Easy shot. Her real pay rate on these films vs the ask is probably skewing the analysis.
#7 Matt Damon – Did not get his studio ask on The Informant! or Invictus, which did not underperform, even though Forbes characterizes as such. $122m worldwide was enough to make the film slightly profitable. Green Zone was a bust, absolutely. Probably is getting paid his rate on Contagion… and WB is probably happy to pay it.
#8 Vince Vaughn – Has opened four starring films out of five to over $30 million. Forbes, You are a moron.
#9 Adam Sandler – Again, only an idiot who knows nothing about the film business
By Denzel's photo on slideshow, I got suspicious. BUT ADAM SANDLER??? (Nuts. No way...)
would put the comedy version of Denzel on this list. He hasn’t had a film in his comedy wheelhouse gross less than $100 million domestic in 3 days short of 10 years. Nine in a row. He has never once grossed as much overseas as he did at home. And Sony knows this. And his films and his paydays are budgeted accordingly. The below-the-line has grown a bit fat over the years, but he is still a cash cow that any studio would want. The four “misses” were for major directors working on their own steam (Judd Apatow, Jim Brooks) or budgeted to fit low commercial expectations (Paul Thomas Anderson, Mike Binder). He has a “put” deal with Sony that he really hasn’t ever abused.
#10 Jim Carrey – The one reasonable person on this list. He is the classic example of a great, popular talent who started getting interested in too-expensive productions. Still, in the last decade, he has had only two movies open to less than $14 million… the beloved arthouse film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Majestic, his one unmitigated flop… a drama. Apparently, if I Love You, Phillip Morris opened in the spring or the year before, he wouldn’t be on the list, since he didn’t take much money to make the low budget film.
Anyway… this piece – and almost every list they do at Forbes regarding the film and television industry – is an embarrassment. There is almost zero attention paid to journalism and basically, they pick cheap. big targets that will draw page views.
One of my “victims” responded last week that, yes, the reason to do lists is because readers like it. THAT’S NOT JOURNALISM, THAT’S MARKETING!!!
If you want to be a marketer, seriously, get the hell off of my lawn.
I don’t mind a little self-promotion. I get that. You have to do some. But when it comes to doing the work, DO THE WORK… or don’t. But this ain’t The Work. It’s tabloid trash… weak, malicious gossip. Enough already.
At least those who are snarky bloggers make no pretense they aren’t mean, snarky, and well, harmful. They don’t make pretend they aren’t slamming someone. Forbes postures itself as a publication, of a higher level. Are they? It takes a sharp eye to assess that they are not. That Forbes’ ‘financial science’ is not only irrevelantly inaccurate, but fools the readers. And I really deplore malicious intent. Doubly, when it’s used for marketing purposes. Forbes: Grow up already.
Best,
Dana
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