Late last year, All the Money in the World had to make a mad scramble to do reshoots that would remove Kevin Spacey from the picture and replace him with Christopher Plummer while still making the movie’s December 22nd release date. Director Ridley Scott managed to pull it off, and told USA Today in December that and the main cast came back to do the reshoots for nothing:
RIDLEY SCOTT: “The whole reshoot was — in normal terms was expensive but not as expensive as you think. Because all of them, everyone did it for nothing.”
USA TODAY: “Really?”
SCOTT: “No, I wouldn’t get paid, I refused to get paid.”
USA TODAY: “You didn’t pay the actors more to do it?”
SCOTT: “No, they all came in free. Christopher had to get paid. But Michelle, no. Me, no. I wouldn’t do that to — ”
USA TODAY: “The crew, of course, did get paid?”
SCOTT: “Of course. "
But it turns out that wasn’t exactly the case. According to USA Today, Mark Wahlberg got paid $1.5 million for his participation while co-star Michelle Williams only got an $80 per diem that added up to $1,000. What’s even more surprising is that Wahlberg and Williams are both represented by the William Morris Endeavor agency, and it’s a bit of a black eye that the agency would negotiate a killer deal for one of their clients while leaving the other with less than 1% of their co-star’s fee.
That being said, there are a bunch of mitigating factors we don’t know about. As reporter Jeremy Smith pointed out on Twitter, $80/day would be a clear violation of SAG rules, so it’s possible that Williams got a different deal than Wahlberg:
But however it shakes out, it’s a bad look for Wahlberg and for WME. They should have negotiated in some form of solidarity so that it looked like everyone was coming back for the good of the project. Right now, it looks like Wahlberg was greedy and while we can argue about whether or not he’s worth the extra $1.5 million, there’s something to be said for standing with your fellow artists, especially on a project that’s not a summer blockbuster.
I imagine we haven’t heard the last of this story as publicists come out of the woodwork to defend their various clients. However it shakes out, there’s a clear pay disparity in Hollywood, and even if Williams had a different deal than Wahlberg, it doesn’t change the larger inequality affecting the gender pay gap in our country.
