Wondering if anyone has a list of all professional athletes and team coaches making, say, $1 million a year or more, and a list of all authors, dancers, singers, band members, etc. who make more than $1 million a year. Which list is longer?
For example, there are at least 350, perhaps over 400 MLB players making over a million a year.
Can you imagine if there are that many American entertainers making that much?
“Forbes” magazines does various lists of these things every year, in different formats.
I remember them once saying that an entertainer would make more money for longer. Essentially Paul McCartney still pulls in $400,000 every year for “Having a wonderful christmas”. An athlete like Kirk Gibson who hits a big home run in 1988 will see that fade over time.
The celebrities who rake in huge amounts of cash are those who own what they star in-like Speilberg and Winfrey.
forbes does that silly “Top Ten” format mostly, or top 25. Anyone have a list that goes all the way down to a measly 1 mil per year?
That’s darn near everyone on television. Scale (base pay) for a starring role on a 1-hour show is currently $7,524/day ($4,703 for a half-hour show). At 5 days a week to film, that comes out to $37,620 an episode. At 24 episodes for a season for a 1-hour prime-time series, it’s $902,880 a season ($564,360 for a half-hour show). And that’s the *bare minimum *someone can make at current union rates.
But wait, there’s more! You get $3,456 for a rerun ($2,428 for a half-hour show). All 24 eps are rerun, so add $82,944 ($58,272). So, the minimum possible annual salary for an actor on a 1-hour prime-time show is $985,824, or $566,788 for a half-hour show. They also get paid for promo spots, billboards and the like.
Basically, anyone you’ve actually heard of is probably getting a million bucks or they’re shopping for a better agent.
That’s okay, I haven’t heard of more than a few dozen entertainment people…:dubious:
I could personally name 400 entertainers making that much. Gosh, just drive by a movie theatre. See the faces on the posters? Millionaires.
Major film actors can command a million bucks a movie and some far, far more.
Are you grouping all entertainers together? Or are you looking for lists of all writers (stop), all dancers (stop), all musicians (stop), etc. There are certainly more millionaire athletes than writers or dancers, but it would be a close call with actors and musicians, especially considering residuals.
There are more entertainers making $1 million a year in royalties from stuff they produced years ago than there are athletes making $1 million for playing this year.
The OP asked about lists. Here you go…
USA Today publishes salaries for team sports, but does not include NASCAR, tennis, golf, boxng.
This site has a good compilation of earnings by entertainers.
When Michael jackson (a) kicked the bucket and (b) they closed Neverland, suddenly his impulsive overspending ground to a halt at the same time his sales skyrocketed and he became pretty much the richest, best-earning dead star (although IIRC Elvis has had that locked up for years beforehand).
Don’t underestimate the amount that entertainers make. A typical movie (other than indie) seems to cost in the tens of millions, the big ones cost a hundred million or two nowadays; you can bet the stars get a chunk of that.
Sean AStin reveals that he made $250,000 for the three Lord of the Rings movies, about 2 years work IIRC and that was considered pretty low pay; but there are suggestions Peter Jackson made sure the actors got a bit more when the movies actually made money. Certainly the roles did not hurt their careers at all and I’m sure they now command appearance fees at conventions and such.
That’s the up front money. TV & film actors get residuals – a piece of the profits from DVD sales and re-broadcast deals. I’m guessing Astin gets more than $250k each year in residual checks.
Paul McCartney gets $500,000 a year in royalties for one song, Wonderful Christmas Time, which probably is not on the top-50 list of best-selling songs he wrote.
IIRC Astin’s complaint was that he did not have a formal residuals contract, that Jackson and the studios cheaped out on that one and working outside the USA they got around that requirement. To be fair, it was a big gamble, if the film bombed the loss would have been huge… Plus it was a very large cast, and as a lesser lead his share probably would have been small.
Or maybe it was the matter of Hollywood accounting.