RESOLVING THE LEDGER
This is one outlet's own report from The A.V. Club — the article as it was filed. Other outlets are covering the same event; open the full story to compare every source side by side.
See the full story · 2 sources
With the fires of Mount Doom raging once again, and Andy Serkis returning to Middle-earth to conjure some motion-capture magic for The Hunt For Gollum , Samwise Gamgee has yet to agree to another adventure. Speaking to The Guardian , Sean Astin says he isn’t opposed to slipping into some big, hairy feet again, if the money’s right. It’s something many of his cast members have spoken to in the past: for the billions of dollars the Lord Of The Rings films took in, none of the cast made all that much money off of them. “I was not prepared for that level of visibility and access,” Astin tells The Guardian . “And there was a disconnect between the attention that I was getting and how much money we had. It was not a lot of money!” Astin, for his part, had sold his house “because I negotiated such a small amount on the trilogy.”
In 2017, the actor revealed he earned around $250,000 for a year and a half of work on the films and no residuals. Unfortunately, he bought a house with a $250,000-a-year mortgage right before the production began. “I did the audition process and got offered Lord Of The Rings , and it was an offer for $250,000 for a year and a half,” he told the Jim And Sam Show in 2017 . “And I was like ‘Wait a minute, my pen signed this contract which obligated me to $250,000 a year, and I’m gonna sign this contract which will make it so that I absolutely cannot satisfy that other thing.'”
Astin has yet to sign on to the upcoming Lord Of The Rings prequel, The Hunt For Gollum , nor its Stephen Colbert-penned sequel, Shadow Of The Past . However, he doesn’t “think anybody is opposed to it” as the whole cast would “love to connect to those characters, particularly if it’s done with such sensitivity as we heard.” However, The Guardian ‘s Steve Rose asks if he expects to be better paid this time. “Goddamn right,” Astin returns.
Astin is hardly the only member of the Rings extended family to go public about their surprisingly low pay for the series . Shortly after the films were released, made billions, and won Oscars, director Peter Jackson sued New Line in 2005, claiming he was underpaid by $100 million. In 2019, Orlando Bloom told Howard Stern that he was paid $175,000 for all three movies. Meanwhile, Cate Blanchett took the job because she “wanted to work with the guy who made Braindead .”
“I basically got free sandwiches, and I got to keep my ears,” she said on a 2024 Watch What Happens Live . “No one got paid anything!”
AIPROPX is an independent multi-source news index — we track, compare, and connect coverage from across the web into one place you won't find anywhere else.