One of the leading causes of mutiny against the boss amongst employees in an office comes from not being paid what they were promised. That would most definitely be a bad rep for the company, and this time round Marvel is the culprit, who paid Florence Pugh quite a hefty amount as compared to the creator of her character.
Midsommar star Florence Pugh stars in Thunderbolts as the adoptive sister of Natasha Romanoff, Yelena Belova, who was trained to be a Black Widow alongside Romanoff in the infamous Soviet Red Room. The character is a great addition to the MCU, that’s for sure, but is the original writer getting the amount she was promised from Marvel for her work?
Marvel Paid Florence Pugh More Than Devin Grayson For Yelena Belova
It’s never a good idea to mess with someone in a deal, and it’s especially not the best of ideas to do so when you’re literally billion dollar company that can be put on display for ‘cancellation’ on the internet in one wrong move.
Anyways, back to the point, Florence Pugh is a brilliant actor that’s for sure, which only makes sense that Marvel had to shell out $10 million to pay her wages for acting in Thunderbolts. But a recent wage-cut controversy surrounding the creator of Yelena Belova has tarnished Marvel’s reputation recently.
Devin Grayson, along with J.G. Jones, originally wrote Yelena Belova’s character for an appearance in Inhumans #5 back in 1999. Belova is confirmed to be the first asexual character in the Marvel Universe too!
Back in July this year, Grayson revealed to The Hollywood Reporter in somewhat of a public statement that she was paid only $5000 out of the $12500 from Marvel regarding the use of Belova as a character for Black Widow.
However, Marvel did themselves right after THR published Grayson’s statement on her wage cut, eventually paying the remaining $7500 to the comic book writer.
However, Marvel’s Pay For Florence Pugh Just Keeps Rising
It’s no doubt that acting in a superhero movie is the big money project that every actor would love to work on, the pay is substantially higher compared to other projects! Robert Downey Jr was literally paid a staggering $50 million for his role in The Avengers (2012), which isn’t even the best Avengers movie.
While Devin Grayson was struggling to even get her full pay from Marvel, Florence Pugh was getting a hundred times more than what Grayson was being paid ($10 million).
And that figure isn’t stopping there, it’s been reported that Pugh will be earning an eight-figure salary for the upcoming two Marvel movies in which she stars as Yelena Belova. This is also because she’ll be a leading cast member in the upcoming Thunderbolts movie
This however isn’t a good look for the studios involved who hire and pay such exorbitant wages to actors mainly because they fail to pay the deserved amount to writers of the movie characters as we have seen in Devin Grayson’s case, and this culture needs to change.
Thunderbolts is slated for a theatrical release on July 26, 2024.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
