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Poor Johnny Depp. As Captain Sparrow, he could do no wrong: his last four Pirates of the Caribbean movies grossed a combined $3.7 billion, making it one of the most successful franchises ever. But as Lord Charlie in Mortdecai or Dr. Will Caster in Transcendence, he failed to strike box office gold despite pocketing millions personally.
Depp is this year's most overpaid actor: His recent movies returned just $1.20 for every $1 he was paid on them. In second place is Denzel Washington, who returned a dismal $6.50 for every $1 he earned from his recent films.
This year's ranking of Hollywood's Most Overpaid Actors is dominated by established male leads who charge top dollar but don't always deliver at the ticket booth . To compile our rundown, we looked at the last three films each actor starred in before June 2015, save animated films, movies where the actor appeared in an insignificant role, or movies that were released on fewer than 2,000 screens.
We then deducted the estimated production budget from the global box office for each film according to Box Office Mojo to come up with a limited definition of each movie’s operating income. We took the total operating income from the star's three most recent significant films then divided by the star's estimated pay for those films to come up with a final return on investment number.
Both Washington and Depp have past successes to thank for their ability to command eight figures, but recent box office outings have exposed them as expensive risks. Mortdecai earned a dreary 12% on Rotten Tomatoes and grossed just $47 million on a $60 million budget, while Transcendence barely made back its $100 million production costs at the ticketing booth.
Luckily for Depp, he has two promising sequels on his slate with Alice Through The Looking Glass (2016) and another Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017). Both films should boost his ratios and possibly get him off the list, though the mediocre performance of Black Mass ($94.5 million worldwide gross on a $53 million budget) may weigh down his metrics next year.
Hollywood's Best Actors For The Buck
Third-ranked on this year's overpaid list is Will Ferrell, whose performance in Warner Bros.' Get Hard did little to lift the middling returns of Anchorman 2 and The Campaign. Ferrell returns $6.80 for every $1 paid. That's just a little better than Liam Neeson, who finds himself with a $7.20 return for every $1 paid despite the success of Taken 3. Neeson's averages were brought down by Warner Bros.' Run All Night, which grossed $71.6 million on a $50 million budget.
Though Will Smith is expected to see a return to form with a critically-well-received performance in Concussion, his box office numbers are not what they once were. Thanks to hefty paychecks and the mediocre tallies of movies like Focus ($159 million worldwide on a $50 million budget), Smith's averages a return of $8.60 for every $1 paid. Compare that to Chris Evans, who boasts a $181.80 return for every $1 paid to be Hollywood's Best Actor For The Buck, and their numbers seem even worse.
This year, we did not examine folks unless they had starred in a new eligible movie since last year's scoring period. This meant Adam Sandler, Hollywood's Most Overpaid Actor for the last two years, relinquished his crown (Pixels was released after our June 2015 cut-off, while his series of four
