Fake News: Wonder Woman Actress Did Not Get Paid Less Than Superman Actor
More fake news about the mythical gender wage gap.
BuzzFeed and Elle Magazine tried to push their gender pay gap agenda by comparing Wonder Woman actress Gal Gadot‘s earnings to her DC Cinematic Universe colleague Man of Steel actor Henry Cavill.
Buzzfeed and Elle magazine aren’t exactly bastions of research and facts, but this was so simple to debunk they should both be embarrassed for publishing it.
They both reported that Gal Gadot was paid $300,000 for Wonder Woman while Henry Cavill was paid $14 million for Man of Steel.
Man of Steel made $668 million at the box office total. Wonder Woman has made $571.8 million so far, and has a lot of life left.
It would be perfectly indicative of the gender pay gap that lingers in Hollywood. . . if it were at all true. As the Elle article that sent the stat viral said itself, Cavill’s $14 million earning include bonuses for box office performance, while Gadot’s $300,000, per a 2014 Variety report, is just the base salary for each film she’s made thus far in the DC Universe,” they continued. “Though the details of Cavill’s reported $14 million could not be verified, a source with knowledge of studio negotiations on franchise films told Vanity Fair, ‘It certainly isn’t for one picture. That’s insane.’
For superhero franchises just getting started, though, the process is usually simple: find a star on the rise, pay them relatively little, and then offer more if the franchise takes off. Marvel pioneered the effort with Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, and Chris Hemsworth, all of whom were reportedly paid less than $500,000 for their first solo superhero outings, but eventually landed much bigger paydays for subsequent entries. (Downey Jr. famously made $50 million for The Avengers, and helped his co-stars negotiate higher salaries themselves.) Cavill, like Hemsworth and Evans and Gadot when their franchises started, was more of an unknown, and likely to have signed the same lowball salary contract with a promise of future returns.
So, Cavill wasn’t paid $14 million for Man of Steel, and they made the same with bonuses. I should also note that Gadot made twice as much base salary as Chris Hemsworth in Thor. So much for that narrative.