James McAvoy, speaking candidly as a guest on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, revealed which film in his career has yielded the most money for him. It’s important to note that there are two distinct kinds of earnings: the so-called “residuals“, the union percentages on automatic box office revenue, and the “back end“, the percentages agreed upon by artists in their contracts. Both kick in at different box-office targets and exploitation points, once the budget has been recovered. Referring specifically to these, McAvoy illustrated a small paradox, because, contrary to what one might think, the highest return did not come from a blockbuster.
James McAvoy Thanks M. Night Shyamalan for the Split Jackpot
One might assume that James McAvoy, known as Xavier in the former Fox X-Men films, has several titles on his résumé that could bring in a lot of money in terms of residuals and the like, but the reality is more nuanced, as the actor explained recently while discussing his work on Faith. It isn’t the weight of the film he starred in that matters; rather, “the only project for me that represents a steady source of income is Split. It seems it was made for about $6 million; they spent $30 million on advertising, and in the first weekend we had $40 million in revenue, so we had already broken even. Our first residual check arrived at the end of the first weekend. Crazy stuff! […] M. Night Shyamalan is an incredibly intelligent person, in many regards. What I learned from him was his ability to prepare; he shot that film and Glass with incredibly modest budgets, he was very focused and thoroughly prepared in the way he communicated with the crew. […] Wanted, for example, doesn’t pay me much. […] You always strive to have good percentages of box-office gross in your contract, you pick up bits here and there, but I rarely see anything substantial. Every so often a strange check arrives for $200; once I even got one for $0.25! Honestly, the cost of mailing it would be higher than the amount!
The residual system was created in Hollywood under union pressure, when they looked for a way to support artists in the industry between gigs, when you aren’t protected by wages for various jobs… and you still have to make ends meet, by automatically sharing in the film’s success (or its failure).
For the record, the image above comes from Speak No Evil.
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