Once upon a time, Marvel was called cheap, largely because they didn’t pay their actors massive contracts (and also famously serving Subway sandwiches at their press junkets). Then, The Avengers happened and RDJ pulled in $50 million. So the story became that Marvel was cheap, except for RDJ, who gets the GDP of a small country just for showing up. Now, however, with their first-generation actors years into their contracts, I don’t think we can call Marvel cheap anymore. Besides RDJ, now the Chrises Hemsworth and Evans are pulling eight figures for their appearances, and Scarlett Johansson, the last original Avenger to get her own movie—LOL Hawkeye doesn’t count—is getting $15 million to star in the Black Widow movie.
That’s a lot of money, obviously, and though it’s not quite RDJ money, it is equal to what Evans and Hemsworth got for their most recent solo appearances in Captain America: Civil War and Thor: Ragnarok, respectively. (They also got $15 million apiece for Avengers: Infinity War, but there’s no mention of ScarJo’s payment for that uber-production, so what are we to make of that?) Reliable salary information doesn’t often get out, but this report so deliberately mentions that ScarJo is being paid the same as the Chrises that I trust it. It seems like someone really wants us to know that not only is Marvel paying out lottery money, they’re paying everyone equally. Except for RDJ. He still makes more than everyone else.
