Avengers: Endgame Directors: Cast’s Salaries Were A “Huge Financial Issue”
You’d think that a film franchise that brings in $1 billion over the space of single weekend wouldn’t have problems with its payroll, but Avengers: Endgame co-director Anthony Russo says his cast's mammoth salaries made things pretty tricky.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, the 49-year-old revealed that the studio were forced to film Endgame back-to-back with Infinity War in order to keep all of their stars onboard. Robert Downey Jr. was reportedly on the fattest wedge, earning over $150 million for both movies.
"It was a huge financial issue on this one, and really the way it manifested for us was the fact that we shot these movies back-to-back," Russo said.
"The primary motivation to shoot these movies back-to-back like this and to block them was so that we could condense actors' work so we were basically buying them for a little more than one movie rather than two full movies.
"Marvel and Disney were able to structure deals with the actors because we were economizing their time commitment by blocking the movies this way. That was the only reason to shoot these movies this way."
This story originally appeared on Esquire.co.uk.
* Minor edits have been made by the Esquiremag.ph editors.
