Forbes has revealed the most overpaid actors of the year, that is, the actors who got paid the most money but made the least return on their movies (typically because their movies sucked).
In 2016, the honour of most overpaid actor went to Johnny Depp while the highest paid actor was Dwayne Johnson. This year, the titles of highest paid actor and most overpaid actor are shared by one and the same person.
Mark Wahlberg made $68 million pretax payday this year, which was more than his box office failure Patriots Day (based on the 2016 Boston Marathon bombing) made. Another disappointing film he starred in was Deepwater Horizon, which barely out-earned its estimated $110 million budget.
The title seems strange though given the success of Wahlberg’s more recent films like Transformers: The Last Knight and Daddy’s Home 2, but according to Forbes, they take into account the last three big release films each actor headed prior to June 1, 2017, to compile the list. As a result, Wahlberg’s last three wide releases prior to this date returned just $4.40 at the box office for every $1 he was paid on them.
Coming in second and third place were Christian Bale and Channing Tatum. Their ranking can be largely attributed to the respective failings of their features The Promise (which earned back an estimated 11% of its $90 million-plus production costs following a wave of controversy surrounding the film) and Logan Lucky (Steven Soderbergh’s caper which under-performed making just $46.7 million on a $29 million budget, in spite of positive reviews).
Denzel Washington takes fourth place due to the disappointing performances of Fences (an Oscar winning movie which did well domestically but not internationally) and The Magnificent Seven. After him comes Brad Pitt, who headlined the war thriller Allied, deemed a flop having made just $119.5 million on estimated production costs of $85 million.