The Star Wars Scene That Cost $3 Million For 30 Seconds
Star Wars films are plenty expensive to make, but spending about $1 million dollars every ten seconds has to be some sort of record. That’s exactly what happened when the film franchise was brought back with The Force Awakens in 2015, when one of the original trilogy actors was brought back for a borderline cameo role. Reportedly, Mark Hamill was paid somewhere between $1 million and $3 million for his brief appearance at the end of the film, according to The Goa Spotlight.
Moviegoers who went to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens will remember the end of the film when Rey goes to the planet Ahh-to, where she finds the Jedi Luke Skywalker living a hermit-like existence. The tail end of the film saw her walk up to Skywalker standing on the edge of a cliff looking over the ocean before he turns around and reveals himself before the film cuts to black and John Williams’ iconic score roars to life.
Obviously, the scene is set up as a cliffhanger and is very important as set-up for the next film, but you have to imagine they probably could have got away without revealing Luke’s face (implying it’s Luke) rather than dropping $3 million.
Carrie Fisher’s Leia Organa received a similar amount for her appearance in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, even though she had a bit more screentime and lines than Hamill. Harrison Ford returned as Han Solo pulling in the biggest salary for that film, as he definitely had the biggest role, and it would end up being his last appearance (kind of). Ford was reportedly paid somewhere in the ballpark of $20 million for his appearance.
Of course, Mark Hamill would get paid a decent bit more for his appearance in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, as Luke Skywalker was a much more prominent part of that film with much more screen time. Still, his pay definitely went down if you look at it from a time perspective because he reportedly made somewhere in the area of $5 to $10 million for his Last Jedi role. Compared to his likely one day of work for The Force Awakens, you would have thought he would have pulled in some more cash.
While the most recent trilogy of Star Wars films made a boatload of money, despite spending $3 million in 30 seconds, the final entry of the trilogy was critically panned and put a fairly long hiatus on new movies in the franchise. Instead, Disney pivoted to building out the world with Disney+ shows, to varying degrees of success. Of course, you can’t keep a money-making franchise down for long, and there are more movies now on the way.
It seems like most of the actors from the original trilogy are done reprising their Star Wars roles, so we likely won’t see too many budget stories like this one for the new films. It will be interesting to see if they can execute better than they did with Rise of Skywalker and please new and old fans of the franchise alike. Stay tuned, and we’ll keep you updated on any upcoming Star Wars projects and news.
