Once upon a time, Adam Sandler churned out comedies with very modest budgets. They did pretty well at the box office and everyone involved turned a tidy little profit, leading to new greenlights and more creative freedom. Unfortunately, along the way, the budgets started getting bigger and bigger and long story short, he’s now apparently the most overpriced actor in Hollywood.
The annual study published by Forbes singled the former Saturday Night Live star out thanks to a failures of Jack & Jill and That’s My Boy. The latter in particular brought in less than its budget at the box office, and when added to the advertising budget, it likely lost a pretty penny, even with DVD sales. Grown Ups 2, on the other hand, did very, very well at the box office, but since the period in question measured ended on June of this past year, that film wasn’t counted.
Beyond Sandler, the other celebrities who rounded out the top ten include Katherine Heigl, Reese Witherspoon, Nic Cage, Kevin James, Denzel Washington, Steve Carell, Jennifer Aniston, Matt Damon and Ryan Reynolds. They all earned somewhere between $3 and $11 per one they were paid, which is not good but also a weird sign of their popularity. No one gets paid more than $5,000,000 a role without a lot of career success in the past. Since you have to make a lot of money to be overpaid, it’s definitely a double-edged sword, and it’s one the biggest names in Hollywood can find themselves on different sides of from year-to-year.
Sandler typically does far better with audiences when he’s on the right side of the silliness line. In things like Grown Ups 2, he plays a legitimate human being who the audience can relate to. Even in something like Hotel Transylvania, his vampire is very fatherly. In things like Jack & Jill and That’s My Boy, however, he’s so obnoxiously over the top that it drives away casual filmgoers who aren’t Sandler diehards.
With a more serious role on the horizon and a sequel to Hotel Transylvania in the works, the future looks pretty bright for the comedian. Hopefully, within the next few years, he’ll start looking a whole lot more like a bargain, or at least he’ll start making more loveable, relaxed movies like this gem…
