If you play the lead role in a major blockbuster franchise, whether it be based on a comic book or otherwise, you stand to make an absolute boatload of money. Big salaries, box office percentage points, back-end deals and profit participation clauses can often see a star’s pay packet triple or even quadruple once the numbers have been crunched and the bonuses worked out.
However, that doesn’t tend to be the case when we’re talking about an actor’s first time taking top billing in a big budget project. The obvious example is Robert Downey Jr., who was paid $500,000 for his maiden outing in Jon Favreau’s Iron Man and then walked away from Avengers: Endgame eleven years later with $75 million. Similarly, Chris Hemsworth’s $150,000 for playing the title hero in Kenneth Branagh’s Thor is a drop in the ocean compared to his $20 million windfall for next year’s Love and Thunder.
Robert Pattinson is a recognizable figure known the world over, and his profile is set to increase exponentially when The Batman arrives in March of 2022. However, as you can see from the reactions below, some fans were more than a little surprised that he’s ‘only’ pocketing $3 million upfront for his debut as the Dark Knight.
It’s not as if $3 million is going to leave the 35 year-old living on the breadline by any stretch of the imagination, and while it seems like chump change compared to superhero cinema’s biggest names, it really isn’t. Pattinson will earn more for The Batman than Downey Jr., Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Tom Holland and plenty others went home with following their respective debuts in the genre, so all things considered he’s done pretty well for himself.
