A long time ago, Hollywood stars like Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor started getting paid a million dollars for a movie. Fast forward to today, and one actor made history by earning an unbelievable $156 million for just one film series!
This actor is none other than Keanu Reeves. He became super popular after the success of The Matrix movies in the late 1990s. Once The Matrix became a hit, Warner Bros quickly signed him to act in two more movies: Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions. For these films, Keanu was paid $30 million upfront and got a share of the profits.
When both of these movies came out in 2003, they made a whopping $1.2 billion at the box office! Because of this, Keanu earned an amazing total of $156 million from these two movies, setting a record that nobody has broken for over 20 years!
Before Keanu, the highest amount an actor made for one film was $94 million by Alec Guinness for Star Wars. Since then, no actor has come close to Keanu’s record. For example, Tom Cruise’s biggest paycheck was $100 million, and Shah Rukh Khan earned $40 million for Jawan.
Though Keanu’s record is incredible, it’s worth noting that his earnings came from two films, while Tom Cruise, Will Smith, and Bruce Willis each made $100 million for a single movie.
Interestingly, after his big payday for The Matrix sequels, Keanu did not earn that much again. For his popular John Wick series, he made only $15 to $30 million per film.
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