...according to his IMDB page. That was not much money in 1978. He was the only well known actor in the film.
shareFor 5 days of work. I ran a calculator online that adjusts for inflation. That’s a little over $94,000 in today’s dollars. So that’d be about $19,000/day today in comparison. Considering he was known but not an A-lister, I’d be happy with that pay for 1 week of work.
shareYeah but nobody knew how big the movie would be. The budget was $325,000 and it made 70 million at the box office. There was room to give everyone a little more.
Budget in 1978 was $325,000, which is $1,600,000 today.
Even accounting for the inflated budget, $94,000 (2023 dollars) for Pleasance seems like peanuts for the value he provided to the movie. Well, everyone deserves more...but him especially.
Imagine if he knew in advance "yeah this movie is gonna make 70 million and you're gonna be one of the starring roles and it's going to become a landmark horror classic for years to come but you're only gonna get $20,000." Does sound crazy.
It would have been a nice gesture from the producer to give some points from the box office profit to main cast, director, writer and so on when the movie turned out to be a huge hit.
But I guess that's why sequels were created, so that people behind the original movie could be paid real salaries.
Hopefully he made up for it with the sequels.
shareThis movie was made on a very tight budget. That's why Michael's mask for example is a distorted William Shatner mask; they didn't have the money and production team to make their own.
shareI think I read somewhere that his big reason for doing it was that his daughter wanted him to.
shareInteresting.
I wonder how much he made from residual checks throughout the years from the annual showing of this classic film on tv/cable.
To be fair...come 1978, Pleasence (although still a recognised 'name') was languishing/slumming in a shit-ton of Canadian-Tax-Shelter' movies prior to (and beyond) Halloween.
I'm sure the residuals from this 'low-paid-endevour' more than made up for it?