Halle Berry’s Catwoman may have been savaged by critics, tanked at the box office and was almost instantly labeled as one of the worst movies of all-time, but the actress still walked away with a $14 million paycheck. The DC adaptation’s dismal performance, though, coupled with Jennifer Garner’s Elektra bombing the following year, swore studios off the notion of female-driven comic book blockbusters for over a decade.
But thirteen years later, the double whammy of Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman and Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel showed us that women were more than capable of headlining superhero movies, and in the near future, we’ll see Wonder Woman 1984, Black Widow and Captain Marvel 2 all looking to prove that Birds of Prey‘s underperformance was just a blip.
Gadot received a base salary of $300,000 for Patty Jenkins’ first DCEU effort, but wound up making millions on profit participation and back-end deals, while she recently pocketed a $10 million bonus when the sequel was sent to HBO Max. Larson, meanwhile, was paid $5 million upfront for her solo debut as Carol Danvers, and would have also walked away with a whole lot more after the movie raced past a billion dollars globally.
In terms of salary and total earnings, though, the highest-paid actress in the history of the superhero genre is Scarlett Johansson, who scooped $15 million apiece for Avengers follow-ups Age of Ultron, Infinity War and Endgame, as well as Black Widow. However, she ended up raking in a total of $56 million from Endgame based on performance-related bonuses after it went on to become the biggest pic in history.
Insider Daniel Richtman is now claiming, though, that Larson’s earnings for Captain Marvel 2 will see her take the title from her Avengers cohort, which means her deal is worth a minimum of $15 million, while she likely also has a lucrative set of clauses in her contract that guarantee her even more based on the movie’s earnings. Some fans still might not want her as part of the MCU, but the Academy Award winner is doing pretty well for herself in the role regardless.
