Netflix Is Paying Leonardo DiCaprio And Jennifer Lawrence Massive Sums For Next Film
According to the latest reporting, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence are getting massive paydays for their next Netflix movie
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How much do Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence get paid, even when the movie they’re making isn’t expected to set the world on fire? According to a new story on celebrity paydays, a lot more than you’d expect.
A new story from Variety listing the rates different top-tier Hollywood talent have received for their movies reveals that Netflix offered Leonardo DiCaprio $30 million and Jennifer Lawrence $25 million. The hefty paydays go to the stars for appearing in Adam McKay’s upcoming sci-fi black comedy Don’t Look Up. All that even though, as Cinema Blend points out, the budget for the movie was originally reported as being $75 million — meaning, if you don’t feel like doing the math, DiCaprio and Lawrence’s combined salaries would eat up around 73% of the original budget.
We can only assume the budget for Don’t Look Up has gotten a boost since it was originally reported, especially since Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence won’t be the only big names in the film. Don’t Look Up boasts an impressive ensemble cast including Timothée Chalamet, Jonah Hill, Meryl Streep, Ron Perlman, Cate Blanchett, Tyler Perry, Matthew Perry, Chris Evans, Ariana Grande, and more.
Leonardo DiCaprio’s involvement in the film was announced last October. Directed and co-written by Adam McKay, Don’t Look Up features DiCaprio and Lawrence as relatively unknown astronomers who have to embark on a media tour in order to warn the world of an asteroid that’s heading toward Earth. The teaser for the film was leaked earlier in the month, which among other things shows DiCaprio’s character freaking out in a restroom and Jonah Hill’s character — the son of the president and her chief of staff — complaining that the news of the asteroid is stressing him out.
If the name of writer/director Adam McKay sounds familiar, well — if you’ve been a fan of comedy any time within the past 16 years or so, it should. While this will be his first film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, he’s worked with a lot of great actors. Along with Will Ferrell’s Anchorman films, he directed the 2010 buddy-cop parody The Other Guys, 2015’s The Big Short, the 2018 black comedy-drama Vice starring Christian Bale as former Vice President Dick Cheney, and of course — the movie that makes every drummer look at their drum kit differently — the 2008 comedy Step Brothers.
In spite of the great talent McKay’s worked with, it apparently took Leonardo DiCaprio a while to commit to the film. On the Happy Sad Confused podcast (via Insider), McKay said while he wrote the role of Kate Dibiasky specifically for Jennifer Lawrence, he never imagined DiCaprio would say yes to the role of Dr. Randall Mindy. He told the podcast it was only after five months of DiCaprio and McKay tweaking the script that the actor finally signed on to the film.
There’s no firm release date yet for Don’t Look Up, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence, but you can expect the comedy to be streaming on Netflix by the end of 2021.
