Mark Wahlberg paid $1.5m for All The Money In The World reshoots - while Michelle Williams got $80 a day
The film was hastily reshot after sexual harassment allegations against the original star, Kevin Spacey
Mark Wahlberg received $1.5 million (£1.1m) to re-shoot scenes from biographical drama All The Money In The World, while co-star Michelle Williams worked for $80 (£59) a day, according to USA Today.
That would mean Williams earned less than 0.1% of her male co-star’s pay packet for the reshoots.
After sexual harassment allegations emerged against the film's original star, Kevin Spacey, just weeks before the December premiere date, producers opted to hastily reshoot his scenes with Christopher Plummer in the role.
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Cast members who had appeared in scenes with Spacey, including Wahlberg and Williams, returned to the set for about 10 days to perform them afresh opposite Plummer.
Director Ridley Scott had previously claimed that the stars agreed to redo their scenes for no fee to keep costs down, inside sources told USA Today that Wahlberg’s agents negotiated a $1.5m payout for the retakes.
Meanwhile, four-time Oscar nominee Williams, who was reportedly not informed of these negotiations, worked for $80 per day, which totalled less than $1,000, USA Today reports.
“I said I’d be wherever they needed me, whenever they needed me, and they could have my salary, they could have my holiday, whatever they wanted,” she said in December of the reshoots. “I appreciated so much that they were making this massive effort.”
Both actors are represented by the William Morris Endeavor agency, which did not respond to the newspaper’s request for comment.
Wahlberg and his agents “have a reputation in Hollywood for driving a tough bargain,” the Washington Post reported in November. The actor raked in an estimated $68m (£50.3m) in 2017, according to Forbes, making him Hollywood’s highest-paid star.
Christopher Plummer to replace Kevin Spacey in Ridley Scott's All The Money In The World
9 November
Kevin Spacey has been axed from a starring role as J. Paul Getty in a film about the 1973 kidnapping of the oil tycoon’s grandson, weeks before it is due to be released in cinemas.
The disgraced Oscar-winner’s scenes as plutocrat Getty in the movie, titled All The Money In The World, will now be shelved, with Canadian actor Christopher Plummer signed on to play the role in a series of hasty reshoots.
Shooting on the film had already been completed when the decision was made to remove Spacey from the final cut, Variety reports. A trailer for the film featuring Spacey was released in September.
Co-stars Mark Wahlberg and Michelle Williams, who play the boy’s distraught parents, will also reshoot some of their scenes opposite Plummer.
Despite the age difference between the two actors - at 87, Plummer is almost 30 years Spacey’s senior - the recasting may come as a welcome development for director Ridley Scott.
Plummer “was reportedly Scott’s first choice for the role of Getty, but the director was pressured into casting a bigger name”, The Guardian reports.
All The Money In The World was originally set to premiere on 16 November at the American Film Institute’s film festival, but the release was pushed back to 22 December after the allegations against Spacey surfaced.
Sources told Variety that Spacey had filmed around two weeks’ worth of footage, “meaning the deadline isn’t impossible, but still quite tough to pull off”.
Broadway star Anthony Rapp has accused Spacey of attempting to molest him when he was a teenager at a party in the 1980s.
Production on Netflix hit House of Cards, in which Spacey played the lead role as scheming politician Frank Underwood, was also halted after Rapp went public with his accusation. The upcoming sixth season will be the last, and producers are considering additional measures to remove Spacey from the episodes, including killing off Underwood, The Independent reports.
Spacey has said that he does not remember the incident Rapp describes, but apologised in a statement for any “inappropriate drunken behaviour” he might have displayed.
Several other allegations of misconduct have since surfaced, including a claim by former US TV presenter Heather Unruh that the actor groped her 18-year-old son in a bar last year.
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