Actors often score leading roles in box office successes and pocket sizable salaries in the movie business. However, occasional strange cosmic alignments cause talented actors to miss out on exceptional opportunities. One such astonishing case involved Arnold Schwarzenegger, who never shot even one scene with his co-stars in Batman & Robin despite earning an incredible 25 times more than his co-star (George Clooney).
Joel Schumacher’s $238 million DC film cast the Former Governor of California, 76, as Dr. Victor Fries/Mr. Freeze, primarily because the actor was a superstar at the time. However, that turned out to be a problem for the filmmakers. Despite appearing onscreen for a very brief period of time, the former bodybuilder was paid a salary that was significantly higher than that of the film’s Bruce Wayne / Batman.
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Batman & Robin Co-Stars Were Not In A Single Scene With Him
Arnold Schwarzenegger co-starred with George Clooney and Chris O’Donnell in the disastrous Batman & Robin movie, which was directed by Joel Schumacher.
According to BuzzFeed, Schwarzenegger was paid $25 million for his work in Batman & Robin. He worked on the set for about 25 days, which translates to an average salary of $1 million per day. That is even more impressive when you consider that Clooney reportedly earned about $1 million for his role as Batman in the movie, per CinemaBlend. Moreover, Clooney and O’Donnell maintained that they never exchanged words with The Austrian Oak.
According to O’Donnell’s account in the documentary, Shadows of the Bat: The Cinematic Saga of the Dark Knight, the circumstance was as follows:
“[I]’m in a lot of scenes with Mr. Freeze, I never worked a single day with Arnold. Not a single day. I was on the set with him a lot. I’d hang out and talk to him, I did a lot of publicity with him, but literally, they had a double for him that was so good..”
Arnold Schwarzenegger Earning $25 Million Bothered George Clooney?
On the Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, George Clooney—who played Batman in the film—discussed what transpired during production. The actor, 62, believed he received all the fans’ “heat” despite the fact that Arnold Schwarzenegger made a fortune:
“Schwarzenegger was paid, I think, $25 million for that, which was like 20 times more than I was paid for it, and, you know, we never even worked together! We worked together one day. But I took all the heat.”
Clooney also admitted that he was not a good fit for the role of Batman and that the movie was doomed from the start:
“Now, fair deal; I was playing Batman and I wasn’t good in it, and it wasn’t a good film, but what I learned from that failure was, I had to rethink how I was working.”
Clooney chuckled about the whole debacle during a 2020 appearance on The Howard Stern Show:
“[T]hey paid Arnold $25 million to be in it. They paid me, like, one. And we never even worked together, we never even saw each other. It was … a big monster machine..”
Despite having a $125–160 million production budget, Batman & Robin only made $238 million worldwide. Critics gave the movie generally unfavorable reviews, and it is regarded as one of the worst movies ever made.
Stream Batman & Robin on Max.
